Young People in Care - Emotional Health

“Please see a Freedom of Information request below relating to the emotional health of looked after children.

The request relates to section 7 of the Care Planning, Placement and Review 2010 Regulations http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/959/regulation/7/made

1. How many young people entered the care of your authority from 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019? 298. This is the number of unique children who were in care at some point between 01/04/18 and 31/03/19 (each child only counted once). This excludes those children who were on short breaks.

2. How many of the young people that entered the care of your authority from 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019, had their emotional health assessed on entry to the care of your authority (aligned to the legislation highlighted above)?

Devon County Council does hold this information but to locate, extract and retrieve it would mean a manual review of all 298 records. At approximately ten minutes for each record we estimate that this would take in the region of 50 hours.

Under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 public authorities are not obliged to comply with requests which exceed the cost limit of £450 (equating to 18 hours of time). For this reason we believe that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limits).

3. Out of the young people who entered the care of your authority between 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019, how many of them were assessed as needing a therapeutic intervention (For the purposes of this FOI, a therapeutic intervention is any kind of therapy that is delivered by a person who is qualified to deliver mental health interventions). On entry to care in their emotional health assessment (aligned to the legislation highlighted above)?

Devon County Council (DCC) does hold this information but to locate, extract and collate it would mean a manual review of all 298 records. At approximately ten minutes for each record we estimate that this would take in the region of 50 hours.

4.Using the answer from question 3 above, how many young people (between 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019) who were assessed as needing a therapeutic* intervention for their emotional health have received the intervention?

DCC would hold some information in this regard, but not all. The information held would, therefore, not be an accurate reflection of numbers.

The NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is the lead commissioner of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). CAMHS is not the sole offer for therapy, and there are a number of individual packages purchased to support this work.

You may, however, wish to submit your request to the CCG for information they hold relating to children involved with CAMHS.

5.What was the total number of children in care that your authority looked after between 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019?

911. This is the number of unique children who were in care at some point between 01/04/18 and 31/03/19 (each child only counted once). This excludes those children who were on short breaks.

6.From the total number of children in care that your authority looked after between 1^st April 2018 to 31^st March 2019 (answer from Q5), how many of them were recorded as suffering with a PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or attachment condition?”

Devon County Council may hold some of this information but to locate, extract and collate it would mean a manual review of all 911 records, as PTSD is not specifically recorded as a reportable field. At approximately ten minutes for each record we estimate that this would take in the region of 152 hours.