Children taken into Kent County Council care during 2012

The request was partially successful.

Dear Kent County Council,

Under the FOI Act I wish to be informed as to the figures regarding children taken into care during 2012 and the conditions under which this was carried out. There for I make the following requests for information:

1. The number of children taken into Kent County Council care during 2012. Insofar as is possible please break these numbers down by gender and age.

2. How many of these children were taken into care without Kent County Council obtaining an Emergency Protection Order.

3. How many of these children were taken into care using only Police Protection Powers.

4. How many of these children were taken into care by Kent County Council with a Social Worker present who:

a. did not obtain his/her qualifications for the role in the UK

b. qualified in the UK

c. do not fit into the other two categories

5. Please provide an overview of relevant non UK qualifications held and the process by which equivalency has been established. Insofar as is possible please break down the originating countries of qualification.

6. Roughly what percentage of these cases saw a family group conference meeting held prior to any children being taken into the care of Kent County Council. Please list separately the number of children that did receive a family group conference and list the number of children that did not

7. In instances of no family group conference meeting taking place and insofar as is reasonable please outline reasons why this was not undertaken.

Yours faithfully,

Mr M. Brown.

Kent County Council

Dear Mr  Brown

 

Thank you for your email below.

 

Kent County Council acknowledges your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Assuming KCC holds this information, we
will endeavour to supply the data to you as soon as possible but no later
than 12 April 2013 (20 working days from date of receipt).

 

We will advise you as soon as possible if we do not hold this information
or if there are exemptions to be considered and/or any costs for providing
the information. Please quote our reference - FOI/13/0416 - in any
communication regarding this particular request.

 

Best regards

Miss Ellis Bryant
Information Access Officer
Information Resilience & Transparency Team
Business Strategy & Support, Governance & Law
Kent County Council, Room 2.71, Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone,
ME14 1XQ. 
Telephone: 01622 696199, Internal: 7000 6199, Fax: 01622 696075
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...

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Dear Kent County Council,

Just a reminder that by law you needed to reply to my FOI request 15 April 2013. Please note that KCC are over due in fulfilling their legal requirements.

Miss Ellis Bryant (Information Access Officer) acknowledged the request on the 14 March 2013 but no follow up has been forthcoming.

You can see the full details of the request here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/1...

I feel I must request an internal review as to why the FOI request was not responded to in the required time frame and ask again the the request be fulfilled as promptly as possible.

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Brown

Kent County Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Brown
 
Thank you for your request for information. Please accept my sincerest
apologies for the delay in sending this response.
 
I am pleased to provide the response below:
 
Please find attached pdf document within which you can find the answers to
your questions 1, 2, 3 and 6. With regards to questions 4, 5 and 7 of your
request, Kent County Council is unable to provide the
requested information as it involves searching through 955
children's records and would require our Area Education Officers to find
and answer 1 of these records per minute. This would certainly exceed the
appropriate limit for the whole of the request of £450 (18 hours @ £25 per
hour), so under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, we are not
obliged to deal with this element of your request.
 
If you are unhappy with this response, and believe KCC has not complied
with legislation, please ask for a review by following our complaints
process; details can be found at this link
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/have...
on our website. Please quote reference FOI/13/0416.

 

If you still remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you can
appeal to the Information Commissioner, who oversees compliance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Details of what you need to do, should
you wish to pursue this course of action, are available from the
Information Commissioner’s website [2]http://www.ico.org.uk/complaints

 
Many thanks
 
James Mercer
Information Access Officer
Information Resilience & Transparency Team
Business Strategy & Support, Governance & Law
Kent County Council, Room 2.71, Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone,
ME14 1XQ. 
Telephone: 01622 221037, Internal: 7000 1037, Fax: 01622 696075
[3]http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...

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sandy Joyce left an annotation ()

Interesting, the highest number of children in care under any category are all aged under one years old, in other words babies

Adoptable?
Bonuses?

Wonder how many were white, blonde haired and blue eyed

Kent County Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Brown

Thank you for your email. I am sorry that Kent County Council failed to respond to your request for information within 20 working days and I appreciate that as a result of this the Authority has failed to comply with statutory timescales on this occasion. You complaint is therefore upheld.

Kent County Council is a very large local authority; our employee headcount is in excess of 35,000 including school staff, 12,000 of which work directly for KCC. KCC's operations are divided across five directorates, which up until April 2011 had their own devolved powers and financial management. With a few exceptions, there has been no statutory or business need for many of the council's records to be held in a centralised system, and as KCC does not have an electronic document and records management system which would facilitate searching, it is often time consuming simply locating all the records that may fall within the scope of the request which is the main reason why it took so long for us to deal with your request.

Some of the statistics you asked for are already routinely collated as they are used for the quarterly performance report which is published on our website. http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/coun..., However, other information you asked for would need to be extrapolated directly from records of the 956 looked after children which are held by the 12 local district offices providing social care. Looking through 956 case files, extracting relevant data and then collating it would clearly exceed the appropriate limit of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours @ £25 per hour) which means under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act we can refuse to comply with your request or in this case, elements of it.

However, a review of the information provided to you indicated that one of the column headings may be misleading so I have attached a revised version which clarifies that 956 is the number of children that became "looked after" in 2012 as opposed to the total number of looked after children.

If you are still unhappy with this explanation, you can appeal to the Information Commissioner, who oversees compliance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Details of what you need to do, should you wish to pursue this course of action, are available from the Information Commissioner's website http://www.ico.org.uk/complaints, or you can phone the ICO Helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Best regards

Caroline Dodge
Team Leader, Information Resilience & Transparency Team, Business Strategy & Support, Governance & Law Kent County Council, Room 2.71, Sessions House, County Road, Maidstone, ME14 1XQ
Tel: 01622 221652, Internal 7000 1652,
Fax: 01622 696075
http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/cont...

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