Download the following papers for the meeting in portable document format :

• Agenda
• Paper 1 Placement from home
• Paper 2 Private fostering
• Paper 3 Participation
• Paper 4 Teenagers
• Paper 5 Neighbourhood statistics and children in need/looked after data
  
  
  Summary note from meeting held on 11 September 2003
  

  Welcome and Introductions

1. Keith Childs welcomed the TWG members and new members were introduced.
2. As this meeting was only on issues relating to children the minutes of the previous meeting were not discussed – this will be done at the start of the next meeting.
3. It was noted that DH staff working on Children’s Services had transferred to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). TWG would carry on as usual for now.

Transfer to DfES and links to databases

4. Annie Sorbie and Malcolm Britton gave an update on the transfer to DfES. They explained that statistics and policy colleagues had transferred (or were in the process of transferring), so there would be an impact on the work with LAs and TWG. However data collection and analysis would carry on as usual during the transfer period. In particular the CLA6 project would continue on the planned timetable. Statistics staff will eventually move to a DfES building so they will have different contact details.
5. Currently the DH performance indicator set for social services covers both children and adults. For 2003-04 the children’s PIs will remain in this set.
6. Malcolm Britton described the forums that exist in DfES for discussing data issues with local authorities. The Education Data Advisory Panel (EDAP) has representatives from Local Education Authorities, the Local Government Association and unions, and they discuss data collection, dissemination and burdens on data providers. There is also a Rapid Implementation Group with representatives from almost all the LEAs, which discusses changes to data collections. One of the existing groups may be extended to include children’s PSS representatives. Malcolm Britton asked TWG members for their views and ideas.

Action: LAs to feed in their views on how best to carry forward the TWG following the move to DfES.

7. Terry Davies asked about the development and introduction of PIs. Malcolm Britton explained that in DfES this work was mainly done by policy colleagues and LEAs were not directly involved at the development stage. LA members felt that it was important for ADSS and LGA to continue to be involved in the development of indicators (including bandings). Terry Davies said that in his experience social services indicators were often more complicated than those in other areas, such as education. He felt that a forum like TWG was necessary in the new structure.
8. Malcolm Britton mentioned the DfES data rationalisation project, which was moving towards having one main data collection rather than several separate ones. The Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) was set up two years ago and this links to Key Stage, GCSE and A-Level results. In the future other aspects of education would be built in too, such as absence and exclusion. It is hoped that there will be an opportunity to link the PLASC database with data on children in touch with social services so that the educational achievements of these children can be analysed in more detail than at present.
9. There was some discussion about the Unique Pupil Number (UPN) which is used in PLASC. Although there are a small number of cases where a child has more than one number in the system, it is generally working very well. David Singer asked whether the UPN could be shared with Social Services Departments. Malcolm Britton explained that it was originally only supposed to be used within the schools sector. However, now that children’s social services and schools are under the same Secretary of State, it will hopefully be possible to share the information in future. Malcolm Britton will find out about the legal issues so that Annie Sorbie can give an update at the next TWG meeting. If the UPN can be shared with SD3A, the OC1 return and parts of the OC2 may no longer be needed.

Action: Annie Sorbie to provide an update at the next meeting on legal issues relating to sharing the UPN.

10. Keith Childs mentioned that the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) would have more responsibility for indicators than SSI have had. He also pointed out that the expenditure and workforce returns may need to be changed in future as they currently cover both children’s and adults services.

Children placed more than 20 miles from home (Paper TWG 03/3/1)

11. Tabitha Brufal explained the policy behind this new data collection. It is related to the Choice Protects program, which is designed to help LAs improve the way they plan and commission placements and services. Although in some circumstances it is necessary to place a child at a distance from home, in general it is better for LAs to provide local placements. Annie Sorbie asked whether TWG members had any questions about the proposed data collection.
12. David Singer summed up the views of the LA members. One of their concerns about the data collection was that it would be impractical to calculate the distance for each child, especially in LAs with a large number of looked after children. However, they would prefer to give the actual distances from home rather than using pre-defined bandings, particularly for the first year of the collection. LA members thought that the proposed indicator was important but felt that more work was needed on it. They would like to see one year of data collection and then some analysis of the data before the indicator was finalised. It was suggested by the TWG that the indicator should be delayed until 2005-06. Data for 2004-05 should still be collected and applied to the indicator retrospectively.
13. There was some discussion about whether distance was the right thing to measure. The time taken to cover a certain distance would depend on public transport, type of roads and other factors. This could vary a lot, particularly between cities and rural areas. Terry Davies pointed out that in the Care Planning Guidance, ‘30 minutes’ was given rather than a distance.
14. Joyce Phillips queried the definition of ‘home’ as some of the children had never had a stable home prior to being looked after. However it was generally felt that alternative definitions would be too complicated.
15. Although there could be confidentiality issues it was decided that LAs providing DfES with postcodes was a good option. It was decided that DfES would look into the legal issues around LAs supplying postcode level data to the Department and give an update at the next TWG meeting. LAs would look at the feasibility of providing the information, as well as any legal issues from their side. LAs would like national guidance on information sharing issues such as this.

Action: DfES to look into legal issues of obtaining postcodes from LAs.

LAs to assess the feasibility of providing postcodes.

16. If there were legal issues that could not be resolved in time, another option would be for DfES to provide a software tool so that LAs could obtain the distances easily from postcodes. Tish Gailey suggested that LAs could provide aggregate information instead, but this would be less useful as it could not be linked to other data.
17. Tish Gailey thought that some groups of children should be excluded from the indicator. These could be children placed for adoption (because it may be best to distance them from their natural family), UASCs (because their home was likely to be in another country) and disabled children (because a suitable placement might not available locally). Tabitha Brufal said that LAs should aim to provide suitable local placements for disabled children. It was agreed that the PI group should have more discussions about the indicator.

Private fostering (Paper TWG 03/3/2)

18. Tabitha Brufal explained the policy relating to this paper. In response to the Laming Inquiry, National Minimum Standards for private fostering are going to be introduced. For this reason the Department would like to introduce a data collection on notifications of new private fostering arrangements and the number of visits carried out by LAs. Ruth Edwards asked TWG members if they had any comments on the proposed return.
19. David Singer said that the LAs were generally in support of the return and they felt that it was important. One of their main concerns was whether the figures would give a true picture of private fostering or not, because they would only include arrangements that the LA had been notified about.
20. Ruth Edwards clarified that a visit should take place within 7 calendar days of either the notification or the start of the arrangement, whichever happens latest. David Singer mentioned that the wording about ethnicity did not match the wording in the regulations.

Action: Ruth Edwards to check the wording about ethnicity and to clarify the guidance about the timing of visits.

21. Tish Gailey was concerned that if a performance indicator was going to be based on these data, there would be an incentive for LAs not to advertise the need for notification. Ruth Edwards said that there were no plans for a PI on this at this point in time.

Participation (Paper TWG 03/3/3)

22. Barbara Herts explained that child participation underpinned the Quality Protects programme and was one of the objectives listed in the Government’s Objectives for Children’s Social Services. The children’s performance indicators are currently under review, and are being redrafted so that all the objectives have an associated PI. Therefore, a new indicator on participation was proposed. Keith Childs asked for comments on the proposed data collection.
23. David Singer explained the views of the LA members. They felt it was an important issue and would like to see an indicator on participation. However they were not comfortable with the wording of the return. It seemed unlikely that any LA would say that they did not let a child express his or her views. It would therefore not make a good indicator. The timing of the collection was also a concern, as the proposed date would mean the LAs had to start collecting the data in October 2003.
24. Tish Gailey said that she thought the two parts of the proposal should be dealt with separately. The first part was to collect data on the percentage of children whose review was on time. This was important and would be relatively simple to collect. There is a similar question on the CPR3 return. The second issue was whether the children communicated their views to the review. This was more difficult to measure.
25. John Rowlands suggested collecting data on the methods children used to express their views, for example in person, through an advocate, using viewpoint or personal diaries. There could be issues about double counting if a child used more than one method though.
26. There was some discussion about collecting the data on the SSDA903 rather than on an aggregate return. Some LAs felt this would be better and would allow the raw data to be analysed (the date of each review and method used). However some LAs said that it would too complicated to fit the ‘review history’ into the structure of the 903, and that it would involve too many changes to their systems.
27. From a policy point of view it is important to set up an indicator on participation as soon as possible, as the aim was to have at least one PI for each government objective. However it was decided that it would be better to collect the data for the year ending March 2005 rather than the year ending September 2004. Possibilities for doing this were adding the questions to the CPR3 return (although this is not ideal as it covers a different group of children), adding them to the SSDA903, setting up a new return, or including them in a future survey of foster children. It was agreed that information on the timing of reviews would be collected from 1 April 2004. The Department would announce this to LAs as soon as possible, and would confirm later which return would be used to collect the data. Further consideration would be given to the collection of data on participation in reviews and revised proposals could be put to the October TWG.
28. Tish Gailey volunteered to be involved with the development of the indicator.

Action: Annie Sorbie to inform LAs that data on the timing of reviews and possibly participation would be collected from 1 April 2004.

DfES to give further consideration to how the data would be collected.

Teenage parents (Paper TWG 03/3/4)

29. Michelle Warne and Dilwyn Shears explained the policy background to this paper. There is currently very little information available on how many looked after children and care leavers are teenage parents. However research carried out about 10 years ago suggests that these groups are more likely to become teenage parents than the general population. Policy colleagues would like a baseline figure for this population so that they can measure the prevalence of teenage pregnancy amongst looked after children, and develop targeted prevention measures to bring this rate down. They would also like an annual return to be set up to monitor the target population, and to measure the effectiveness of any targeted prevention measures they develop. Annie Sorbie explained that the first stage would be to collect data on the SSDA903 and OC3, and asked for any comments on the proposed questions.
30. There was a lot of discussion about which data items should be collected. It was thought that it would be relatively easy to collect data on girls who gave birth while looked after, but more difficult to collect information on the dates of birth of their children. It would also be difficult to collect data on teenage fathers. One option would be to run a pilot with some LAs to check the feasibility of collecting the data.
31. Policy colleagues stated that they would like to know at what ages looked after children become parents, and whether they have more than one child, so a way of collecting the information at this level of detail needs to be developed. They would also be interested to know how many of the young people were already parents before they became looked after.
32. David Singer suggested asking a yes/no question on the 903 to find out whether each looked after child was a parent or not. This would be simpler than asking for all the exact dates of birth. However, it would not provide information on the age that they became a parent. John Rowlands said that a question asking whether a looked after child had become a parent in the last year would provide information about the number of children born and their approximate dates of birth. However, technical details would need to be considered.
33. Some Local Authorities thought it could be especially hard to get information from care leavers about whether they are parents. Tish Gailey wondered whether care leavers might be less likely to keep in touch with LAs if they knew they would be asked this type of question. Michelle Warne said that as care leavers are recognised as a particularly vulnerable group it was important to include them in the data collection if possible. Part of the strategy was to support the young people and the contact with care leavers could also be a way to give them access to services. Meena Krishinani said that the 16+ service in her LA would be happy to help find out what information it would be possible to get from care leavers.
34. It would not be possible to obtain the data from a health source because it would not identify which of the young people were looked after. However Phillip Brocklehurst suggested getting data from the IRT (Identification, Referral and Tracking) system when it is in place, because that will identify looked after children. The IRT is still at an early stage so the data will need to be collected from LAs before then.
35. LA members said that they would not want the data to be used for a performance indicator because of the small numbers involved.
36. Keith Childs said that the Department would let all LAs know soon that they would need to collect data on looked after children who were teenage parents, and that the exact details would be confirmed later. This issue will be discussed again at the next TWG meeting.

Action: Annie Sorbie to inform LAs that they will need to collect data on teenage parents.

Neighbourhood statistics (Paper TWG 03/3/5)

37. Tracie Kilbey explained that the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit within the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had found that it was important to develop information on neighbourhoods. There was no formal definition of a neighbourhood but this could be a ward or census output area. The ONS Neighbourhood Statistics Service offers users a variety of data for small geographic areas. However it currently provides very little health information at this level. DH/DfES need to decide which datasets on children could be collected at a small area level, and are currently interested in the Children in Need and Children Looked After datasets. Tracie Kilbey asked LA members whether it would be easy for them to supply full postcode information for these datasets to DfES, and whether there were any legal issues that needed to be resolved.
38. Tracie Kilbey explained that no data would be published at postcode level but that it would be useful to collect it at this level to allow flexibility in how it is aggregated. ONS is developing methods to ensure that individuals cannot be identified from small area data.
39. Most LA members agreed that they would be able to provide postcode information from these datasets (once the legal issues were sorted out), but thought that some other LAs would find it more difficult. It was noted that many LAs would not use the postcode information themselves, so it is important to avoid increasing the burden on LAs. Phillip Brocklehurst said that his LA had already used postcodes to map data with another local data source.
40. It would be necessary to check what postcode information LAs had available, for example home or placement postcodes. It was thought that some LAs might overwrite the information in their systems so that only the latest postcode is stored. It would be useful for the Department to contact the main IT suppliers to check which systems made it compulsory to enter postcode information.

Action: DH/DfES to talk to IT suppliers about using postcodes in their systems

41. Tracie Kilbey asked TWG to nominate some LA volunteers to answer questions on what data was available, how easy it would be to collect, and whether they were happy with the suggested approach. The questions would be asked via a face-to-face or telephone interview. The LA members at the meeting were happy to volunteer, though David Singer pointed out that it would be better to ask statistical contacts in all LAs for volunteers, to get a more representative spread. DH agreed to use the CiN contact list to approach all LAs, ask for volunteers, and to choose a representative sample from these to interview.

Action: Tracie Kilbey to ask statistical contacts in all LAs for volunteers to be interviewed about neighbourhood statistics.

Additional agenda item - discussion on delivery of equipment for adults

42. LA members wanted the new guidance on when to start counting the time taken to supply equipment to be withdrawn from Audit Commission newsletter 22, which some TWG Members had seen in draft. Many councils were not following this guidance and could not change their systems part way through the year. This was agreed. The definition would need to be clarified in time for 2004-05 and the Adults Review Group would be asked to come up with proposals.
43. Terry Davies was concerned about the two new BVPIs that had not gone through PAF. He thought that the Department should rethink the definitions and ensure that the data would be available from RAP. In particular the definition of the last service in a care plan was not always appropriate for complex cases.

Future Meetings

23 October 2003
11 December 2003

Anne Foulger
September 2003

Present:

ANNEX A

SUMMARY OF ACTION POINTS

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