Tower Hamlets Children, Schools & FamiliesDirectorate – Social Care Procedures

CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER

3. PERMANENCY OPTIONS PLANNING Edition 5, January 2011

3permanency options planning

1Introduction

1.1Working for permanency

1.2Background

1.3The purpose of permanency options planning

2permanency options planning in practice

2.1Criteria for starting permanency options planning

2.2On admission

2.3First child care review: preliminary discussion

2.4Meeting Prior to the Second Child Care Review

2.5Second child care review: permanency options discussion

2.6Second child care review - the permanency options discussion in action

3after the LAC REVIEW

3.1Distributing the record of the discussion

3.2Families in disagreement with decisions

3.3Taking the recommendation to other forums

Tower Hamlets Children, Schools & FamiliesDirectorate – Social Care Procedures

CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER

3. PERMANENCY OPTIONS PLANNING Edition 5, January 2011

3permanency options planning
1Introduction

1.1Working for permanency

1.1.1In our work with looked after children, we aim to achieve permanency of care as soon as possible. Where it is feasible we work towards rehabilitation with the birth family; but where a permanent alternative placement may prove necessary, planning for it should begin as early as possible.

1.1.2This procedure discusses permanency options planning, a process built into LAC reviewing to ensure early provisional planning for an alternative permanent placement where such planning appears necessary.

1.2Background

1.2.1Legislation and associated standards have increased and clarified the requirements for permanency planning for looked after children. The Children, Schools & Families(CSF) Directorate must work to strict timetables in producing plans and making decisions about looked after children’s futures.

/ Adoption & Children Act 2002
National Adoption Standards for England
LAC(98)20, "Adoption - Achieving the Right Balance"

1.2.2Local Authority Circular LAC(98)20 “Adoption – Achieving the Right Balance” stresses two important points, as follows.

a)The need to make the decisions about permanency in looked after cases as early as possible.
b)The need to reduce the length of time that looked after children wait to be placed with a permanent alternative family once it has been agreed that this is the plan for them.

1.2.3There is a need to strike a balance between seeking rehabilitation where possible and establishing permanency of care in a reasonable length of time. As "Adoption – Achieving the Right Balance" states: "Where a child is in the care of a local authority, the Children Act 1989 places a duty on them to make all reasonable efforts to rehabilitate the child with his or her family whenever possible, unless it is clear that the child can no longer live with his family or that the authority has sufficient evidence to suggest that further attempts at rehabilitation are unlikely to succeed". Permanency options planning is designed to help achieve this balance.

/ LAC(98)20 “Adoption – Achieving the Right Balance”

1.2.4For the purposes of this procedure, the most relevant of The National Adoption Standards for England is as follows. Whenever plans for permanence are being considered, they will be made on the basis of the needs of each looked after child, and within the following timescales:

/ National Adoption Standards for England, Section A, paragraph 2.
a)the child's need for a permanent home will be addressed at the four month review and a plan for permanence made;
b)clear timescales will be set for achieving the plan, which will be appropriately monitored and considered at every subsequent review;
c)where adoption has been identified as the plan for the child at a review, the Adoption Panel will make its recommendation within 2 months of that review.

1.2.5As a consequence of the Government's requirements, the planning process needs to begin immediately, with an initial plan being formulated at the first child care review.

1.3The purpose of permanency options planning

1.3.1Permanency options planning begins almost as soon as the child becomes looked after. It is standard in all looked after cases, with the following exceptions:

i)short breaks, as defined in children looked-after procedure 16a:Short Breaks; / See CLA procedure 16a: Short Breaks
ii)planned short term placements, in response, for instance, to a parent's hospitalisation.

1.3.2The purpose of the planning is to minimise the time the child spends in a placement without a permanency plan, by ensuring that:

i)the question of permanent alternative placement is considered early in the planning process;
and
ii)where it is indicated, work towards a permanent alternative placement is begun and progressed as speedily as possible, even in conjunction with ongoing work towards rehabilitation with the birth parents (parallel planning).

1.3.3Permanency options planning should enable the second child care review to draw up a permanency plan built around one of the following options.

a)Rehabilitation to the family of origin, within a timescale that promotes and protects the welfare of the child.
b)Rehabilitation, as above, but in parallel with planning for c), d), e), f) or g) below.
c)Permanent placement within a kinship network or with a connected person.
d)Adoption, with or without the support of an Adoption Allowance.
e)Placement under a Special Guardianship Order, with or without the support of a Special Guardianship Order allowance. / See CLA procedure 17a: Special Guardianship
f)Placement under a Residence Order, with or without the support of a Residence Order Allowance.
g)Long-term foster care or long-term residential care, planned and approved for the duration of childhood.

1.3.4All the above options are seen as able to promote the achievement of positive outcomes for children looked after. However, those routes to permanency that invest individual parental responsibility in a carer or carers – rehabilitation to birth parents, residence orders, adoption and special guardianship – are preferable and must be considered in all cases. However, given the diverse community of Tower Hamlets, other ways of achieving permanency may be equally valid – in other words, the above list of options should be considered and progressed depending on the needs and circumstances of individual children.

1.3.5The gender and age of individual children must of course be considered, but permanency options planning must also take account of factors in the child’s circumstances related to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability. Family factors must also be taken into account, especially the placement of siblings.

1.3.6Note that permanency options planning is not the same as, and does not replace, the Permanency Planning Meeting, which in appropriate cases considers detailed matching issues and other matters in conjunction with the Permanency and Adoption Support team (PAST) at a later stage.

2permanency options planning in practice

2.1Criteria for starting permanency options planning

2.1.1As stated above, permanency options planning must be conducted in every looked after case except short breaks and planned short term placements.

2.1.2Permanency options planning should therefore be carried out in most cases. This is not to deny that the planning process is more straightforward in some of those cases than in others. Sometimes little discussion is needed because options are so limited by the circumstances of the case, for instance:

a)rehabilitation with the family has already been ruled out by the Care Plan, and permanent alternative placement is already the plan, because, for instance, the child has been given up by the parents, or the parents have died;
or
b)the young person has reached an age that makes a successful alternative permanent family placement very unlikely.

2.1.3In cases of adolescents accommodated following a breakdown in their relationship with their parents, the family are often reluctant to confront the situation but, if they do, emotions are likely to run very high. It is always imperative to focus the family's attention on the need to look at the issues and not to let the situation drift, and permanency options planning may help in this process. At the same time, permanency options planning should be implemented carefully so that a return home is not ruled out prematurely due to a strength of feeling that in due course may be moderated.

2.2On admission

2.2.1As soon as the child becomes looked after, the social worker should explain to the family that the local authority is expected by central government to be clear by the second review, i.e. after four months, whether the child is returning to the family or going to an alternative permanent placement. It should be explained that neither of these objectives has to be achieved within four months, only clear plans made.

2.2.2It is important to alert parents as soon as reasonably possible of the need to avoid delay in care planning and to underline the need to seek a permanent future as soon as possible. Research indicates that there is strong correlation between absence of permanency planning and poor outcomes.

2.2.3The social worker should make it clear to the family that Children’s Social Care will be making a preliminary evaluation of permanency options in time for the first statutory child care review, based on:

/ Social worker
i)assessment of the child and family, by the social worker or other professionals;
ii)the social worker's analysis of the case files, and
iii)guidance from research.

2.2.4Although the best way for parents to be informed about the thinking on permanency planning is by the child’s social worker in person, it might not be done in this way for various reasons. In light of this, a letter will be sent by the Child Protection & Reviewing Service with the initial Child Care Review invitation explaining both the need to avoid drift and the fact that there will be a permanency planning discussion at the review. The letter is signed by the Head of Social Care and entitled ‘Planning for Permanence’. It also provides details of the Family Rights Group Help Line as well as the other parental support groups. A copy of the letter will be forwarded to the allocated social worker.

/ CPRS admin

2.3First child care review: preliminary discussion

2.3.1At the first statutory child care review, held within one month of the child becoming looked after, there should be a preliminary discussion of permanency. This should be conducted in the light of assessment and case-file analysis, both of which will balance the consideration of other relevant information such as research findings.

2.3.2The discussion should cover the following points:

i)Is the initial assessment complete?
ii)Is the core assessment complete?
iii)Has rehabilitation definitely been ruled out?
iv)Has rehabilitation not yet been ruled out?
v)If rehabilitation has not been ruled out, what is being done to achieve it?
vi)What has to change in order for rehabilitation to be achieved, including changes that require resources to which commitments cannot be made at this stage, such as specialist counselling?
vii)Who is responsible for bringing these things about by the second child care review?
viii)Is it warranted to think about routes to permanency other than rehabilitation, given the social worker's assessment and file analysis to date?
ix)If so, what actions will be necessary before the second child care review, and what options need to be tried? For instance, family group conference; kinship care; referral to the Family Placement Service; beginning life story work.
x)What specific legal actions are thought likely to be necessary?
xi)Discuss gathering a health history, both of the child and his or her family, especially in relation to the possible impact of health issues on a permanent carer's ability to care for the child.
xii)What are the known views of the child or young person about permanent alternative placement?
xiii)Other issues discussed.

2.3.3With reference to ix) above, if referral for a family group conference has been ruled out, the LACC should record this in the review record.

2.3.4The discussion of health at xi) should consider both the child’s and the carer’s health, and, if necessary, be followed by contact with the relevant Adults Health & Wellbeing care management team, to ensure that the negative impact on the family of any health problems suffered by the child’s parent or carer is minimised through service provision as far as possible. Health should never be the sole factor in a decision to make an alternative permanent placement.

2.3.5Where the parents' intention is to give up the child permanently, for instance in a case of a baby or young child being given up for adoption, and it seems to us that there would be some hope of rehabilitation if the parents' wishes were different, the meeting should establish that appropriate counselling, or other appropriate intervention, has been given by social workers or others, and that the parents have been afforded every opportunity to work towards rehabilitation.

2.3.6Equally, in cases where both the young person and the parents are opposed to rehabilitation, for instance in a case of a newly accommodated adolescent, and it seems to us that there would be some hope of rehabilitation if the parents' and young person's wishes were different, the meeting should establish that appropriate intervention by social workers or others has been made or attempted, and that the parents and young person have been afforded every opportunity to work towards rehabilitation.

2.3.7The discussion and decisions should be recordedin the minutes of the child care review.

2.3.8Where in the professional judgement of the Chair/Independent Reviewing Officer that there is a likelihood that the child may need to be placed in:

  1. a kinship / connected person placement then a referral to the Kinship Care Team will need to made as soon as possible and the social worker should complete a viability assessment;

  1. a long-term foster placement then a referral to the Fostering Team will need to be made;

  1. an adoptive placement then a referral to the Permanency and Adoption Support Team (PAST) will need to be made.

2.3.9It should be stressed once again to the child and the parents that Children, Schools & Families(CSF) Directorate is obliged to have a permanency plan by the second child care review, i.e. within four months of the child becoming looked after, and this fact, rather than anything particular about the case, is the reason for conducting the process.

2.4Meeting Prior to the Second Child Care Review

2.4.1Prior to the Second Child Care Review, a meeting should be held between the LACC and the Social Worker and/or the appropriate manager. Its main focus will be the outcome of the core assessment, the preliminary indications from any other assessments and how it will frame the future planning for the looked after child. This meeting will address the work that has already been done by the CSF Directorate and explore the need for further areas of work. The LACC will run through the implications of various permanency-planning options that could be deemed appropriate to the case and the likely time scales.The pre-second review-planning meeting will gather information and support the social worker in planning for permanence. A brief record of the meeting will be noted by the LACC and forwarded to the social worker and team manager and copied for case file record.

2.5Second child care review: permanency options discussion

2.5.1At the second child care review there should be a permanency options discussion that considers and chooses one of the seven routes to permanency, a) to g), detailed at 1.3.3 above.

/ 1.3.3 above

2.5.2The expectation in Tower Hamlets is that the permanency options discussion will take place as part of the second child care review, regardless of any other planning meetings that have taken place or are expected to take place.

2.5.3Generally in Tower Hamlets we invite parents and others with parental responsibility to the review. As is the case with the review, the parents should be excluded from the permanency options discussion in exceptional circumstances only. Reasons for exclusion from either meeting should be stated in the record of that meeting. The following list of possible reasons for exclusion corresponds to a similar list for excluding parents from reviews in CLA procedure8: Reviews, and is neither prescriptive nor exclusive:

/ CLA procedure 8: Reviews
i)if parent(s) hearing the information at the permanency options discussion may place the child at risk;
ii)if there is a serious threat of violence or disruption by a parent during a permanency options discussion;
iii)where the parent's presence at such a meeting would prejudice any legal proceedings or police investigation;
iv)where the child is of an age to express a view and has indicated that s/he does not want the parent(s) present.

2.5.4Where a parent has been excluded the IRO/LACC will identify the reasons for exclusion on the LAC Review Record and identify what opportunities have been offered to ensure that the views of the parents are incorporated within the review process. Where children are subject to S20 and S38 of the 1989 Children Act and their parents have been excluded then the IRO/LACC must offer them an opportunity to ensure that they are aware of the plans of the local authority and be provided with an opportunity to inform the LAC Review process of their views.

2.5.5Normally, the following people should join in the permanency options discussion at the second child care review:

i)the child;
ii)the parents;
iii)the social worker;
iv)the social worker’s team manager, if this is feasible;
v)foster carer or key residential worker;
vi)foster carer’s link worker;
NB: It is possible that additional people should be considered. For instance, the parents may have an independent support worker (e.g. from the Post-Adoption Centre).

2.5.6Other people who may play an important part in planning for, and achieving, permanency for the child can be consulted separately. They might include: