CYP Scrutiny Committee - Children being placed with alleged sex offenders review outcome
Case reference FOI2025/00772
Received 11 April 2025
Published 12 May 2025
Request
Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 21 January meeting In response to a question about children being placed with alleged sex offenders by this council.
'We are keen to give further assurances in this matter. The director of childrens services DCS with help from appropriate service directors will make a review of all current placements to provide additional senior management overview in each case.'
The terms of enquiry are then stated.
I am asking for a copy of the review outcome.
Response
Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 21 January meeting In response to a question about children being placed with alleged sex offenders by this council.
'We are keen to give further assurances in this matter. The director of childrens services DCS with help from appropriate service directors will make a review of all current placements to provide additional senior management overview in each case.'
The terms of enquiry are then stated.
I am asking for a copy of the review outcome.
Answer: The Service Area has confirmed the following:
We follow the guidance noted within our procedures based on the Fostering Services Regulations 2011. Persons Disqualified from Fostering. We assured ourselves as a senior leadership team by reviewing all files and cross referencing the information with key partner agencies. We have completed the following.
The Fostering Service Manager has ensured that all our mainstream, and kinship (connected) carers have an up-to-date enhanced Disclosure and Barring check. This is done every three years. All due renewals are in progress.
As additional assurance, at all recent supervision visits our fostering social workers have assured themselves of the residents within the home and reviewed any regular visitors to the home. Carers are aware they are required to inform the fostering supervisor in the event any new person moves in or becomes a regular visitor and indeed if they themselves are subject to any police investigation, but we undertook to ask this specific question as additional assurance and reminder. We ensured that checks required on any new visitors that were identified have been completed. No visitors or carers were identified as having convictions.
To gain additional up to date assurance we asked our colleagues in West Mercia Police to cross reference our carers against individuals that have been convicted of sexual offences (including Sexual Harm Prevention Orders). This is due to be complete on the 7th May. No carer has been raised as being a concern as of the 6th of May 2025.
We have confirmed that Independent Reviewing Officers and Panel Chairs are asking an ‘explicit’ question within their future meetings with carers, to check and confirm if they have any new convictions/charges and our Fostering social worker will ask this as a specific question to confirm any new household member/regular visitor at carer supervision sessions. This is being cross referenced at Child in Care reviews and at Foster Carer Reviews.
Our Safeguarding Senior Manager who oversees LADO (Local Authority Designated Officer) arrangements has reviewed the list of level 2 and 3 nominals from Herefordshire MAPPA (Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements). We can confirm that none are associated with a Herefordshire Council fostering household based on the information on Mosaic, our Child, and Carer Record system.
We wrote to all our independent fostering agencies to remind them of their responsibilities regarding safer recruitment, to ascertain assurance and gain confirmation that their carers also inform us of any changes to their status and household which would impact and or potentially prevent them from caring for a child.
We have completed this review for additional assurance of compliance with existing process and procures already in place. Whilst we have found no carers of concern, we have added processes to be more explicit and to specifically ask questions, and more frequently, rather than rely on carers informing us of changes and or at annual reviews in our future practice.
Documents
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