The provision of support to, families with No Recourse to Public Funds (‘NRPF’) seeking access to support under section 17 of the Children Act 1989.
Contact details
1. Does your local authority have a separate team dealing with requests for support under section 17 Children Act 1989, for example an ‘NRPF team’
No
2. If yes, please provide contact details for this team (telephone and email)
Following our response to question 1 above, this question is no longer applicable.
3. If no, please confirm where referrals for such support should be directed to and the contact details (telephone and email)
All referrals for assessments under section 17 are sent to our initial assessment teams of which there are 4 across Devon County Council. Contact details and information is available online at: https://www.devon.gov.uk/educationandfamilies/early-years-and-childcare/devon-family-information-directory
4. Please also provide contact details for the relevant legal team supporting children’s services or dedicated NRPF team
We can confirm that Devon County Council does not have a specific legal team supporting NRPF issues.
Policies
5. Do you have any guidance or policy documents or other such written material in respect of undertaking assessments and providing support pursuant to section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to families with no recourse to public funds (including documents specific to this issue, or of more general application but covering this issue)?
6. If yes, please provide us with a copy.
No, although we can confirm that we do hold published documentation with respect to undertaking assessments and assisting families with no recourse to public funds which can be seen online at:
https://devonchildcare.proceduresonline.com/p_assessment.html
https://devonchildcare.proceduresonline.com/p_no_recourse_public.html
Subsistence
7. Do you pay a set rate of financial subsistence to families with no recourse to public funds?
We do not pay a set rate; any rate is dependent upon need and personal circumstances.
8. If yes, what is paid?
9. How has that figure been reached? E.g. is it by reference to Child Benefit rates, asylum support (section 4 or section 95 rates)?
10. When was this level set?
11. Who took this decision?
12. Please provide copies of any reports, minutes, decision documents detailing the setting of this rate.
13. If you do not pay a set rate of financial subsistence to families with no recourse to public funds,
Following our response to question 7, questions 8-13 are no longer applicable.
14. do you have any guidelines relating to rates of financial support?
15. If yes, please provide a copy.
In response to questions 14-15, we do not hold any guidelines but we would consider benefit rates as part of any assessment.
Statistical information
16. How many referrals for section 17 support for families with NRPF were received in 2018? Please take ‘referrals’ to include both self-presentations and referrals from other agencies or organisations.
We do not hold a central record of the number of referrals for families with NRPF. To obtain this information would require an individual review of the total number of referrals received by the four teams referred to in our response to question 3 above to establish how many involved families with NRPF. We can confirm that in the 2017/18 financial year we received 5,314 referrals. To allow, say, 15 minutes per referral, this would take a total of approximately 1,329 hours. This is in excess of the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and this information is therefore exempt from disclosure pursuant to s. 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
17. How many assessments were undertaken by the NRPF team in 2018?
As confirmed above we do not have a dedicated NRPF team and we therefore do not hold a central record of the number of assessments.
This information could only be obtained with reference to the total number of referrals and, therefore, following our response to question 16, we can confirm that a total of 4,916 assessments were undertaken in the 2017/18 financial year. Utilising a similar calculation, this would therefore take a total of approximately 1,229 hours and this information is therefore also exempt from disclosure pursuant to s.12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
18. In how many of these cases was accommodation and/or subsistence support given?
Please refer to our response to question 17