NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNCIL
21 MAY 2025
STATEMENT OF EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES SERVICE
Performance
Children and Families continue to see a high level of demand and complexity during Quarter 3. Contacts at the front door were 3% higher than last year. The service has also seen the number of referrals received increase by 1.2% since the same time last year and there continues to be high numbers of children at risk of significant harm necessitating a new statutory Child Protection Plan.
The council issued over 200 new child protection plans in Q3. This signifies the 4th successive quarter in which the total number of child protection plans has increased. With Q3 ending with the highest ever total of children on a protection plan seen by North Yorkshire (n=586). Unfortunately, this trend appears set to continue in the coming months. This increase is reflective of the additional complexities families are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. The number of children in care has also increased by 6.5% (n=34) children compared with Q2.
Whilst poverty is not in itself a safeguarding concern, the effects poverty can have on individuals may lead to increased safeguarding concerns in children. Recent data from DWP highlights a 21% increase (n=2,918) in the number of children in North Yorkshire in relative poverty between 2021/22 and 2023/24, and at the end of 2023/24,1 in every 7 children in North Yorkshire were living in relative poverty. We are exploring in more detail if this is a key driver in the demand we are seeing coming through MAST.
Despite the significant rise in referrals, performance remains strong. Both children and family’s assessments and early help assessments completion rates at over 97% in Q3, which is very strong.
Senior leaders are monitoring the increased volume closely to ensure that the teams continue to provide an exemplary service to our vulnerable children.
Fostering Service
Fostering North Yorkshire are pleased to see a continued steady stream of unrelated Foster Carers coming through and joining our fostering community. In addition we continue to see lots of related carers being approved, this means more children are living within their family and network and can have a sense of belonging which is very important for children.
There has been a recent launch and campaign for short breaks carers which will hopefully attract new carers. The Fostering Service is very much looking forward to its annual conference, which is taking place in June this year, it is always a great day to come together and celebrate all the fantastic work carers undertake. This year’s day will look very different with lots of activities and family fun.
Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children - Supported Accommodation
Children and Families have expanded the provision of regulated supported accommodation placements for 16/17-year-old UASC. This now includes 5 properties in the East of the county providing 22 placements and a further 6 properties in the West of the county providing a further 16 UASC placements. This provision comes with floating support for the young people provided by the Minority Inclusion Support Team to ensure that the young people are supported to settle into life in the UK while also ensuring they learn the skills they need to prepare them for adult life.
Nyvoice and Creative Engagement
The team has recently supported several events including members of Flying High group presenting a workshop at the national SEND Conference in Manchester and members of Youth Parliament attended the Annual Youth Sitting in the Houses of Parliament. A SEND voice group has now been set up in Colburn and Northdale.
In partnership with North Yorkshire Sport the service ran a 6-week pilot project called Move and Connect, working with refugee and asylum seeking young people in Knaresborough. The project supported these young people to involve themselves in their local communities, based around sport, food and making local connections. The Care Champions group continue to meet monthly and are working on their latest project which is to understand what motivates people to foster and how they can help improve the fostering recruitment and training journey for carers..
Service Children’s Awards
The service children’s awards took part for the 2nd year running at the Garden Rooms at Tennants, Leyburn on Thursday 24th April. This year there were over 150 nominations received with 68 Nominees in total 9 categories. As with the previous year this was an opportunity to recognise the inspirational work supporting our service children alongside recognising the bravery and talents of the children themselves.
As a run up to the event a ‘Seeds of Love’ art day was held at Risedale School in Catterick Garrison. The event was open to all children aged 7-16 years old across North Yorkshire. The day was all about integration and understanding. The event was joined by the wonderful Mackenzie Thorpe working collaboratively with the child to recreate one of his sculptures but on a bigger scale. Hearts from the sculpture were displayed at the award ceremony and will be exhibited in the brand new community building in Catterick Garrison for many years to come.
Harmful Sexual Behaviour toolkit
The Harmful Sexual Behaviour Strategy received North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (NYSCB) Executive approval in March, marking a significant milestone. Following this, the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Toolkit which supports the Strategy was launched in April to key partners, receiving outstanding feedback.
Schools and other partners committed to sharing the Toolkit with their staff to raise awareness of Harmful Sexual Behaviour and to promote healthy relationships. One school stated, “The Toolkit looks great – really helpful, and exactly what we need in school.” The section on support to parents and how to have difficult conversations was also well received.
Virtual School
This year, Virtual School are very proud to be celebrating 10 years of being part of The Imagination Library Project. The focus has been to ensure as many eligible children as possible to be registered to receive the monthly books. Currently over 50 under-fives are registered. The recent JTAI inspection highlighted the importance of early support for two-year-olds who are accessing early years settings. Virtual School will ensure all two-year-olds to have termly PEPs to support this.
The Child in Need/Child Protection and Previously Looked After / Kinship teams in Virtual School are very well placed to respond to the extension of Virtual School duties becoming statutory in September 2025.
The PLAC/Kinship team are part of the Bridge Project Adoption UK, attending the Scarborough and Skipton group. There are fortnightly meetings held on an evening, and these provide an opportunity for adopted children (and in turn their parents) to be part of a peer-to peer support network and participate in a range of activities.
Support for children with SEND
The DFE grant funded Delivering Better Value programme ended in April. This was a £1m grant for 12 months aiming to trial new approaches to supporting children with SEND. We completed two projects:
Establishment of a multi-disciplinary transitions team to support schools to successfully welcome and support children with high needs relating to SEND when they start school/move to secondary schools. For most of the cohort parents were very concerned about this transition and felt their children would be more successful in special schools, equally the receiving schools often thought they might not be able to meet the child’s needs. At the end of the project almost all children remained in their new school. Most children had previously had attendance issues at their earlier setting, and all children significantly improved their attendance. Exclusions have also been prevented through the support; equally 90% of schools stated they had increased confidence to meet the needs of the children. Inclusion teams will now use the learning from this project to adapt its offer to support schools.
Co production of an Inclusive practice framework, which is a consensus of the support that schools should ordinarily make for children with SEND without EHCPs. This also includes a self-evaluation tool to help schools set targets for the child’s development. Families and young people were also involved in the production of the tool, so it is hoped this will form a platform for discussion in the future about reasonable provision that can be made. The final version will be published in early Autumn following expected revisions to the Ofsted.
Additional investment was also allocated to trial an approach whereby all schools and academies have a named inclusion specialist to advise both at whole school and individual child level. This has been very popular with schools, who feel this has both offered the support they needed and offered more prompt access to support for children. Again, the learning from this project is being used to plan a revised model of support for schools in the next academic year.
Medium Term Financial Strategy – May 2025
High Needs financial pressures have continued to present a financial challenge to the Directorate. This mirrors a national trend stemming from the unfunded increase in the number of children and young people assessed as requiring an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The Directorate continues to take proportionate measures to mitigate the cost pressures in the High Needs Budget.
Through the last twelve months, the local authority has cared for a number of young people with multiple needs requiring a high level of support. Market conditions have presented a financial challenge and the Directorate are considering options to mitigate the emerging costs. The Directorate have plans to meet the savings target in 2025-26 and the approach continues to prioritise and maintain frontline service delivery as much as possible.
Although this information appears in my Statement to Council is should be noted that both Executive Members for the Children and Young People’s Service have joint responsibility for all relevant resources.
COUNCILLOR JANET SANDERSON