MASH Referrals, Missed Education and Taxi Licensing
Case reference FOI2024/00644
Published 29 April 2024
Request
1) How many children were spoken to IN PERSON by MASH social worker/s as part of the initial screening process of contacts and referrals received between October 2023 and February 2024. How many of these children were under 13?
ii ) Number of children spoken to IN PERSON by MASH screening social workers to be broken down into referral outcome threshold level. How many of these children were under 13?
iii) Number of children under 13 spoken to by MASH screening Social Workers as part of initial screening and referral process? How many of those children were to spoken to IN PERSON/ telephone or other format.
2) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what is the number of children of statutory education age attending primary and secondary schools in the county of Herefordshire have had unauthorised absences that equated to more than 10 consecutive sessions or 5 school days. This number should be broken down into each school.
3) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what is the number of children in primary school and secondary schools across Herefordshire whose parents have received a fine or Penalty Charge notices . Please provide this data broken down into each schools.
4) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what number of the penalty charge notices were issued to parents have been paid in full. Please provide this information broken down into each school or education establishment.
5) What is the annual operating cost of Taxi licensing. Please provide this for April 2020- April 2021, April 2022-2023 and April 2023-2024.
Response
1) How many children were spoken to IN PERSON by MASH social worker/s as part of the initial screening process of contacts and referrals received between October 2023 and February 2024. How many of these children were under 13?
ii ) Number of children spoken to IN PERSON by MASH screening social workers to be broken down into referral outcome threshold level.
How many of these children were under 13?
iii) Number of children under 13 spoken to by MASH screening Social Workers as part of initial screening and referral process? How many of those children were to spoken to IN PERSON/ telephone or other format.
2) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what is the number of children of statutory education age attending primary and secondary schools in the county of Herefordshire have had unauthorised absences that equated to more than 10 consecutive sessions or 5 school days. This number should be broken down into each school.
3) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what is the number of children in primary school and secondary schools across Herefordshire whose parents have received a fine or Penalty Charge notices . Please provide this data broken down into each schools.
4) Between September 2022 and April 2024 what number of the penalty charge notices were issued to parents have been paid in full. Please provide this information broken down into each school or education establishment.
5) What is the annual operating cost of Taxi licensing. Please provide this for April 2020- April 2021, April 2022-2023 and April 2023-2024.
A: The above information requested in question 1, 1ii and 1iii is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check contacts between October 2023 and February 2024, reviewing the content of each contact to get an idea if the child was spoken to in person or not. The Service Area have further advised that the method of contact (e.g. In person, over the phone etc) is not routinely recorded, so may not be held in every case.
An initial search has shown that 3775 contacts would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 314 hours to complete.
Furthermore, question 5 regarding Taxi Licensing would also exceed the limit. The Service Area would need to review each panel report and determine the time for preparing the papers, the time for the panel hearing and the time for the decision to be drafted in order to establish costs. There are also other external costs which need to be assessed.
With Panel costs, the panel is made up of reps from Police, Safeguarding, Licensing and County Transport. Each applicant's hearing is different and would have to be calculated separately. In addition we have no formal employee overhead costs so without all of the above the figures it would be impossible to give an accurate figure within the limit.
There are at least 3,000 applications which have other payments involved which would take 15 minutes each to review costs. This would at a conservative estimate take at least 750 hours to complete.
Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
Regarding questions 2 - 4 relating to unauthorized absences, absence data is collected from schools by the Department for Education and published on the gov.uk website. It would be possible for us to send more detailed links and explanation as to where to access this information. If this would be helpful, please let me know.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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