, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Are you talking particularly about the projects that end in 2025?
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Yes, I think the foster placements are—I've experienced them as well and I think they can be absolutely fantastic. So, we're certainly doing all we can to increase the availability of foster carers in Wales, and you have my commitment for that. We're putting…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Thank you, and we certainly do recognise the need for intensive wraparound support for care-experienced parents to reduce the risk of children being removed from their care, and that is one of the priorities for funding for the regional integration fund…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, I want to reassure the committee again that my response did not outrightly reject the call to extend the 'When I am Ready' scheme to all care-experienced children up to the age of 25, including those in residential care. What my response was was…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Yes, well, that is not acceptable. That's not good practice, and that's where our practice framework wants to address those issues, which is why I've talked a lot about this practice framework. And I think it sounds a bit dry, the practice framework, but it…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, this is just the same as we talked about with the social workers, isn't it? I know a high turnover is very distressing for young people. It's very difficult to say, 'You can stop it', because people—their circumstances change, they move on, they change…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
As I said earlier on, we are bringing in practice standards for all areas, eventually, of work by social services, so we will be bringing in those standards. I can absolutely repeat our commitment to legislate this Senedd term to ensure all care leavers have…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
I think you will see when this White Paper comes out more details of the plans for care leavers. I think it's due to be published very soon, and obviously there'll be the chance to have a consultation there. I think that the surveys that we've done have shown…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
We are planning legislation on homelessness, which will bring in care leavers as part of the plans for that legislation. There is a White Paper going to be introduced now in this autumn term, and care leavers are going to be a crucial part of that. So, care…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
We are actively exploring existing legislative levers to support the charter and to try and have a consistent approach to corporate parenting in Wales. We do have legislation in place to strengthen the guidance for local authorities through a dedicated…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Thanks very much. I'm very glad that you brought up kinship care, because obviously, it's crucial and it is being used more and more—rightly, I feel. But obviously, there are various types of arrangements that fall within the kinship umbrella. There are…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, I think I would agree with you. I think advocacy is absolutely crucial and it's really important that we provide the best sort of advocacy service we possibly can. And I just want to reassure the committee and anyone else listening or reading this—my…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
But we want to work with stakeholders to—. That's what we want to be. The whole way we work is to work together, and to work co-productively and to come up with the solutions, which I think would be much more effective, if we work in that way.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
No.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Do you want to say about—?
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Thank you very much for that question about advocacy. The programme for government sets out that we are committed to expanding the provision of advocacy services to support parents whose children are on the edge of care, helping to avoid statutory social…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Sorry, Alistair.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
We haven't, no.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
It's waiting for the evaluation. We certainly haven't looked at it as a potential saving.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, I'm very supportive of the family drug and alcohol court. I was pleased to launch it and have had feedback from it since, and we are evaluating it. I think there's been an interim evaluation, which looks hopeful, and we're having the final evaluation…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, there are no Welsh Government targets for vacancy rates, because manageable vacancy rates will differ across different local authorities, and our focus and priority is to support a resilient workforce and to reduce overall vacancy rates. So, we don't…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
It's quite a different figure, so it would be good if we could clarify that.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Yes. Because the reports provided by Social Care Wales refer, as I understand it, to 49 individual practitioners who had shared that they were an agency role, not a percentage of practitioners, and I think we estimate that about 7 per cent of the sector are…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Well, I think it's important to clarify that agency workers did not account for 49 per cent of children’s services staff in Wales, which I think is what you—
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Services for care experienced children: exploring radical reform - Ministerial scrutiny session
Just within children's services.
