Section 20 and Leaving care support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (3/06/009)

Dear Sir or Madam,

The DCSF has advised that you hold data which I am looking for,
concerning the publication 'Safeguarding children The third
joint chief inspectors’ report on arrangements to safeguard
children 2008'

Concerning this report can you please email be an electronic copy
of:

1) The names of the local authorities/councils who are not
implementing Section 20 of the Children Act, in situations when
they have a duty to do so and are instead using Section 17, as
discussed below:

"There is also evidence that some councils are still not adhering
to the Hillingdon judgement and are inappropriately using section
17 of the Children Act 1989 to provide limited support, such as
temporary accommodation, instead of providing care and
accommodation for looked after children under section 20."

From: Sub section 232. Page 55 - Safeguarding children The third
joint chief inspectors’ report on arrangements to safeguard
children 2008
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/localauthorities/...

2) The names of the local authorities/councils/areas which are not
complying fully with leaving care requirements, as discussed below:

"In some areas, JARs found that compliance with requirements for
leaving care was lower for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children
than for other care leavers in the same area."

From: Sub section 233. Page 55 - Safeguarding children The third
joint chief inspectors’ report on arrangements to safeguard
children 2008
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/localauthorities/...

Notes:

LAC (2003)13: Guidance on accommodating children in need and their
families

“where a child has no parent or guardian in this country, perhaps
because he has arrived alone seeking asylum, the presumption should
be that he would fall within the scope of section 20 and become
looked after, unless the needs assessment reveals particular
factors which would suggest that an alternative response would be
more appropriate. While the needs assessment is being carried out,
he should be cared for under section 20.”
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsands...

Behre & Ors, R v Hillingdon London Borough Council [2003] EWHC 2075
(Admin)(HC) confirmed that UASC under 18 should be accommodated as
looked after children under s20 of the Children Act 1989.
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/localauthorities/...

: Your correspondence

Please ensure that any of your general correspondence,
acknowledgements or holding letters etc are included or
cut-and-pasted into the body of the email messages, using plain
text, rather than as attachments. As this will mean your
correspondence is much easier to access, read and respond to.

: Accessibility:

When providing any information disclosures please provide it in the
original unrestricted format such as:

a. MS Word .doc or Rich Text Text .rtf format or equivalent
(suitable for disclosure of email messages)

b.Spreadsheets in MS Excel .xls format or equivalent

c.Presentations in MS Powerpoint .ppt format or equivalent

or converted to Portable Document Format (PDF), ONLY if none of the
above formats are available

if you only have a paper version (hard copy) available, please
provide a Digital Photo Copier Scanned version in PDF format. If
you do provide disclosures in PDF from a Digital Photo Copier Scan,
please state that you have done so because no other format, such as
a, b or c above, are available.

If you need to redact text elements of any disclosure can you
please ensure that the rest of text based information remains
accessible to a Screen Reader.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader>

Please ensure any electronic disclosures are absolutely free of any
Document limitations or controls, such as making them Read-only,
Encrypted or Password restricted, as this is likely to render them
less usable on a general basis and more specifically, inaccessible
to Assistive Technology.

Please do not send any information in compilation archive formats,
such as .zip.

Providing correspondence and disclosed information via these means
will help ensure that text based information is accessible for use
with a Screen Reader or a Magnifier for none text based information
and will prevent any further and separate representations under the
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reasonably practicable accessibility requests please state why and
provide a copy of any internal information, such as a policy relied
upon that would explain such a decision.

Yours faithfully,

Cassidy, J

Dear Marissa DaGama,

Please pass on my thanks to all at OFSTED involved in responding to
my freedom of information request. I find your final response to be
very helpful and full. I appreciate very much the time taken to
provide relevant quotes from your reports and identifying the
respective local council. I hope this information proves useful to
others.

Yours sincerely,

Cassidy, J

Dear Marissa DaGama,

Thanks, can you send an email to:

team @ whatdotheyknow.com

and ask them to remove the document which can be found at:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/se...

I hope this is helpful and once again thanks for OFSTED's efforts.

Yours sincerely,

Cassidy, J