Looked after Children placements

1)Please state the number of placements of looked after children in unregulated placements (that is placements where the provider is not regulated by Ofsted to provide care) in each of the last five calendar years, and the current calendar year to 10.12.19.

Year Number of placements – excluding short breaks
2014 269 (59 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)
2015 197 (43 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)
2016 182 (41 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)
2017 242 (54 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)
2018 307 (57 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)
2019 250 (51 were P1 – Placed with Parents or person with PR)

2)

i) Please provide a breakdown of these placements by the kind of property type they occupy from the following list:

a) apartment
b) children’s home
c) domestic dwelling
d) camp site
e) caravan
f) tent
g) houseboat
h) hotel
i) bed and breakfast

If your information for location type is not centrally held, and to retrieve it would breach the cost limit, please instead ask your social work team to confirm which, if any, of the above have been used as unregulated placements by your authority in the last five years. Asking team leads to confirm whether these placement types had been used or not would only take a phone call or an email, and would pose little cost burden.

ii) Please ask your social care team if any other kinds of property type are or have been used by your authority to house looked after children in unregulated placements in the last five years, and provide a list of these kinds of properties.

We may hold this information but consider that given the number of placements, the date range requested, and the different information sources to review the total time needed to identify, locate and compile the information would be well in excess of the 18 hours specified under the Freedom of information Act 2000 Section- Cost of Compliance.

3) Please provide a breakdown of the ages of children placed in unregulated placements at the time of placement, and the placement lengths for placements that ended in the 2019 calendar year to 10.12.19.

The table below covers placements with parents and others with parental responsibility only and excludes adoption, fostering, residential family centres,childrens homes, secure units and residential schools.

Age Less than a month 1 – 3 months 4 – 6 months 6 – 12 months 1 – 2 years Over 2 years
Under 1 19 * * * * We do not hold this information
1 – 5 * * * * * As above
6 – 10 * * * * * As above
11 – 15 17 10 7 * * 2
16 – 17 8 25 14 17 14 We do not hold this information

* the use of this symbol means we hold this information but as disclosure may identify individuals and therefore breach their data protection rights we consider the information to be exempt under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 40 (2) personal data.

4) Please list the companies or charities that supplied this unregulated accommodation and care to your authority in the 2019 calendar year to 10.12.19, including their company or charity name and company or charity number.

• Empower Support Services Ltd
• MJ Support Staffing
• Southwest Intervention Services
• Thornbury Nursing Services Ltd
• ISWP Assessment Services Ltd

5) Please state the number of incidents of serious harm, serious incidents, or other never events reported to your authority as having occurred at these unregulated placements in the 2019 calendar year to 10.12.19. Please provide anonymised summaries of these incidents held in your events reporting database.

We may hold some information that could answer this question, but consider that to identify, locate and compile a list of the relevant placements, and then to retrieve any incident details included in case files would take in excess of the 18 hours allowed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 12 Cost of Compliance.

6) Please state the total spend on unregulated placements by your authority in each of the last five calendar years, and the current calendar year to 10.12.19.

The figures below represent spend on placements classified as ‘exceptional arrangements’. This spend only started to be recorded separately to other placement spend in January 2018, therefore, no figures are available before this period. The difference in the amounts is explained by the use of high cost unregulated payments in 2018 and much less use of those in 2019.

• 2018 calendar year – £2,420,000
• 2019 calendar year – £220,000