UPDATE NO 297 13 April 2018

Save the Date – UASC Conference

Please save the date of Thursday 28 June for a conference hosted by Kent County Council on the topic of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. 

The focus of the conference is to share experiences and best practice with other Local Authorities regarding the work Kent have developed with our Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children and Young People – looking at social care, fostering, health, education, accommodation, initial assessments on arrival.

More details will follow in due course. In the meantime please contact Rachel Calver at Kent Virtual School for more details.

Complex LAC and Edge of Care Efficiencies

Following a successful seminar on 16 March 2018 and further discussions with the DCS group, we now have 17 authorities in the region wishing to be part of the fieldwork.  Although we had some success with collecting raw data from our initial group of authorities, it was clear that there are problems categorising type of need as well as children on the edge of care.  Data on cost is more robust.  Our further thinking is to collect sample data from each LA,  developing a “toolkit” which will, as well as providing the in-depth data we need for the analysis, hopefully provide practitioners with a means to record and track their cases in a  more meaningful way.  

We are currently developing this approach as well as identifying lists of external residential establishments and collecting a repository of good practice and innovation which can be shared with colleagues as we proceed.  We are hoping to pilot our new approach during May with a further event for all authorities towards the end of June to launch the toolkit and start the fieldwork.

For more information, and for access to the password-protected shared documents, please contact Mark Evans or Rosemary Perry (details below)

SE Region Adoption Leadership Board

Hilary Brooks (DCS, Southampton) has now taken over as Chair of the SE Region ALB with Jan Fishwick, Chief Executive, PACT as Vice Chair.  The meetings continue to be well attended and there is now more material being cascaded down from National ALB for discussion and comment.  The South East recently hosted a very successful conference for Adoption Decision Makers, attended by delegates from the whole of the South and London.  The discussions were very lively and it was a good opportunity to feedback experiences and concerns to the Andrew Christie, National ALB Chair.  

Our SE Region ALB now has a data sub-group, chaired by Alastair Lee from East Sussex (contact details below); we recently conducted a very useful comparison between our own benchmarking data and Adoption Match data from the adoption register. We are also looking at sufficiency data and where there are likely to be large adopter gaps in the region.

Now that we have one Regional Adoption Agency implemented in the region (Adopt Thames Valley) the ALB is keen to harness the learning from this project to inform other projects in the region. The next meeting is on Friday 8 June 2018 in Crawley.

For further information please contact Rosemary Perry (details below).

SEND 19 – In the money!

On 9 April, DfE confirmed that the SEND19 group would be receiving grant aid for its work for a further year. The sum approved is £22,916.67, which will be matched with the SESLIP contribution of £22,500. Many thanks to Portsmouth for acting as accountable body for this grant.

The group is sponsored by Steve Crocker (DCS, Hampshire and Isle of Wight) and supported by Tracey Maytas (contact details below). Now that funding has been confirmed, the group will, in due course, confirm its programme of activities for 2018-19.

SE DCS Peer Challenge 2018

Planning is underway for 3 Director’s Peer Challenges in 2018. The confirmed participants and dates are in bold on the accompanying chart. 

For more details please go to the SE ADCS Peer Challenge page. Colleagues requiring a more detailed briefing should contact Anna Wright (details below).

The 2018 MoU is now available for particpants to download, sign and return. Thanks to Bracknell Forest for returning a signed MoU.

Thanks to Paul Senior (DCS Wokingham) for joining Triad 2 to cover for West Berkshire while they change DCSs.

I now have a waiting list to join the team to visit Oxfordshire in July; thanks to colleagues from Brighton and Hove, Southampton, Bracknell Forest and Kent for volunteering (names to be confirmed in due course).

Consultation on 2018-19 DCS Peer Challenge Arrangements

Thanks to Bracknell Forest; Brighton and Hove; East Sussex; Hampshire and Isle of Wight; Kent; Milton Keynes; Oxfordshire; Portsmouth; Southampton; Surrey; West Berkshire; Windsor and Maidenhead; and Wokingham for returning consultation forms.

The consultation document is available here. The deadline for responses has passed, but late responses will not be turned away. A report on the exercise will be submitted to SESLIP Steering Group which meets on 11 May.