Break down the below information for the following calendar years: 2019 and 2020. Also provide the information for the period between 1 January 2021 and 28 February 2021.
Q1) Over the stated period, on how many separate occasions did a member of the public contact your council to inform you they suspected that a child was living in a private fostering arrangement (that hadn’t been reported)? In order to report such a suspected private fostering arrangement, people are often directed to a council’s children safeguarding board/children’s services team (or similar) or encouraged to fill out a form (such as via a Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub) on the local authority’s website.
Break down Q1 in terms of what type of person reported the private fostering arrangement (for example, but not limited to: school/teacher, neighbour)
Devon County Council does not record this data in a manner that can be easily extracted from our systems. Therefore, to provide an answer, we would have to undertake a manual interrogation of each case record / referral. MASH receive approximately 1,000 enquiries each month so the period from 01 January 2019 to 28 February 2021 would equate to us searching through roughly 26,000 emails. We estimate that to carry out this exercise per individual record would take up to 5 minutes. Therefore, to conclude this exercise for all 26,000 emails would exceed the cost limit.
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).
1a) How many of the children living under such private fostering arrangements were found to have a disability (specify what kind- such as autism, down syndrome – if that information, indeed, is recorded and retrievable under the constraints of the act)
From our preliminary assessment, we find from January 2019, Devon County Council have had 284 families open the the private fostering team, however we do not record this data in a manner that can be easily extracted from our systems. In order to provide an answer we would have to undertake a manual interrogation of each record. We estimate that to carry out this exercise per individual record would take 20 minutes. Therefore to conclude this exercise for all 284 records exceed the cost limit.
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).
1b) Following the subsequent completion of the Private Fostering Assessment (or similarly titled) form, how many placements were found to be prohibited?
See our response to question 1a above
1c) How many of the private foster carers had convictions recorded on their DBS disclosure form?
See our response to question 1a above
Breakdown all the above information in a table and on a case to case basis over the requested period.