Looked after children 2017
Dear Bedford Borough Council,
Would you kindly be able to tell me:
1. How many children became 'looked after' in your local authority in the calendar year of 2017?
2. Of the children in Q1, how many were in a group of siblings of two or more (I would like the number of children, not the number of groups)?
3. How many of the children that became 'looked after' in your local authority in 2017 were initially placed in Kinship Care/Connected Persons care?
4. How many looked after children in your local authority are currently placed following care proceedings:
a) with long term LA foster carers
b) in kinship care foster placements
5.a. How many applications to be a kinship carer did you receive in 2017 in respect of children subject to Care Proceedings?
5.b. How many of those (5.a.) applications were successful?
6. How many children in your local authority were made the subject of Special Guardianship Order following Care Proceedings in 2017?
7. How many of your local authority's current foster carers are prepared and approved to be long term foster carers of sibling groups of:
a) 2
b) 3 or more
Yours faithfully,
Christina Savage
Thank you for your e-mail requesting information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 / Environmental Information Regulations 2004.
We will proceed with the request which we received today. It is our
intention to have the information delivered to you as soon as possible
otherwise within the statutory 20 working days.
In consideration of the request, which may be subject to any exemptions/
exceptions the Council may rely on to refuse the request, some of which
are absolute and some of which only apply where the public interest in
maintaining the exemption/exception outweighs that in disclosing the
information.
Please note that should you be requesting information under the
Environmental Information Regulations although we provide free access to a
wide range of information through our website, access to any public
registers which we hold and for inspecting information at our offices, we
are allowed to charge you a reasonable fee for providing certain
information. If applicable, we will issue you with a fee notice. This
will detail the tasks involved in responding to the request, and
associated costs. Further information is available on the EIR page of
Bedford Borough Council’s website at the following link:
[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Please note that once a response has been forwarded to you an anonymised
summary of all requests appear on the Bedford Borough website at the
following link:
[2]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Our current practise is that the information will be available to view on
the web for 2 years.
Any future correspondence you may have with the Council in relation to
this matter should be emailed to [3][Bedford Borough Council request email] .
Any emails containing personal or sensitive data will be sent as ‘secure
e-mails’. In order for you to access a secure email you will be asked to
create an account and log into the Council’s secure e-mail reply service.
If you do receive a secure email there will be instructions explaining how
to do this.
“Confidentiality: The information contained in this e-mail and any
attachment may be confidential and may contain legally privileged
information. It is intended only for the use of the named recipient. If
you are not the named recipient, please notify us immediately and delete
it from your system. In such an event, you should not disclose the
contents of this e-mail to any other person, or print it.”
References
Visible links
1. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
2. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
3. mailto:[Bedford Borough Council request email]
I would like to re-submit my request, covering a slightly different period of time namely the financial year and not the calendar year:
1. How many children became 'looked after' in your local authority in the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017?
2. Of the children in Q1, how many were in a group of siblings of two or more (I would like the number of children, not the number of groups)?
3. How many of the children that became 'looked after' in your local authority in the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 were initially placed in Kinship Care/Connected Persons care?
4. How many looked after children in your local authority are currently placed following care proceedings:
a) with long term LA foster carers
b) in kinship care foster placements
5.a. How many applications to be a kinship carer did you receive in the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 in respect of children subject to Care Proceedings?
5.b. How many of those (5.a.) applications were successful (positive viability assessment)?
6. How many children in your local authority were made the subject of Special Guardianship Order following Care Proceedings in the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017?
7. How many of your local authority's current foster carers are prepared and approved to be long term foster carers of sibling groups of:
a) 2
b) 3 or more
Yours Sincerely
Christina Savage
Thank you for your e-mail requesting information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 / Environmental Information Regulations 2004.
We will proceed with the request which we received today. It is our
intention to have the information delivered to you as soon as possible
otherwise within the statutory 20 working days.
In consideration of the request, which may be subject to any exemptions/
exceptions the Council may rely on to refuse the request, some of which
are absolute and some of which only apply where the public interest in
maintaining the exemption/exception outweighs that in disclosing the
information.
Please note that should you be requesting information under the
Environmental Information Regulations although we provide free access to a
wide range of information through our website, access to any public
registers which we hold and for inspecting information at our offices, we
are allowed to charge you a reasonable fee for providing certain
information. If applicable, we will issue you with a fee notice. This
will detail the tasks involved in responding to the request, and
associated costs. Further information is available on the EIR page of
Bedford Borough Council’s website at the following link:
[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Please note that once a response has been forwarded to you an anonymised
summary of all requests appear on the Bedford Borough website at the
following link:
[2]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Our current practise is that the information will be available to view on
the web for 2 years.
Any future correspondence you may have with the Council in relation to
this matter should be emailed to [3][Bedford Borough Council request email] .
Any emails containing personal or sensitive data will be sent as ‘secure
e-mails’. In order for you to access a secure email you will be asked to
create an account and log into the Council’s secure e-mail reply service.
If you do receive a secure email there will be instructions explaining how
to do this.
“Confidentiality: The information contained in this e-mail and any
attachment may be confidential and may contain legally privileged
information. It is intended only for the use of the named recipient. If
you are not the named recipient, please notify us immediately and delete
it from your system. In such an event, you should not disclose the
contents of this e-mail to any other person, or print it.”
References
Visible links
1. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
2. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
3. mailto:[Bedford Borough Council request email]
Bedford BC - OFFICIAL-Unsecure
Dear Ms Savage
Request pursuant to Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request No 11953
I refer to your recent enquiry for information held by the Council.
Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, the authority must
state whether or not the information exists and I confirm that we do hold
the information you requested.
Please find the information you requested enclosed.
You requested:
1. How many children became 'looked after' in your local authority in
the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017?
Answer: 131
2. Of the children in Q1, how many were in a group of siblings of two
or more (I would like the number of children, not the number of groups)?
Answer: 55
3. How many of the children that became 'looked after' in your local
authority in the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 were
initially placed in Kinship Care/Connected Persons care?
Answer: 9
4. How many looked after children in your local authority are currently
placed following care proceedings:
a) with long term LA foster carers - Answer: 45
b) in kinship care foster placements - Answer: 12
5. 5.a. How many applications to be a kinship carer did you receive in
the financial year of 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 in respect of children
subject to Care Proceedings?
5.b. How many of those (5.a.) applications were successful (positive
viability assessment)?
Answer 5a & 5b: Answer 5a & 5b: We do not have a single tracking system
for this and assessments are completed across all teams. To answer this
we would need to manually check each individual client’s file and court
order for this period of time requested and doing this would exceed the
fees limit for FOI. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not oblige
the Council to comply with a request for information if it estimates that
the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate
limit.”
This appropriate limit has been set in the Freedom of Information and Data
Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 which provides
that for a local authority the appropriate limit is £450. This is
calculated by reference to a maximum of 18 hours being taken and the cost
of staff time being set in the Regulations as £25 per hour. The
Regulations also say that In calculating the amount the Council may, “for
the purpose of its estimate, take account only of the costs it reasonably
expects to incur in relation to the request in: (a) determining whether it
holds the information, (b) locating the information, or a document which
may contain the information, (c) retrieving the information, or a document
which may contain the information, and (d) extracting the information from
a document containing it.”
The Council has therefore decided to refuse your request with regard to
Question 5a and 5b.
6. How many children in your local authority were made the subject of
Special Guardianship Order following Care Proceedings in 2017?
Answer: 14
7. How many of your local authority's current foster carers are
prepared and approved to be long term foster carers of sibling groups of:
a) 2 Answer: 8
b) 3 or more Answer: 8
The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. For
further information regarding Re-use of Public Sector information please
see link below.
If after viewing the information you are for whatever reason unhappy with
our response to your application you are entitled to pursue any
dissatisfaction through the Council's Internal Review Procedure. Pursuant
to Section 17 (7) of the Act the procedure provided by the Council for
dealing with complaints about the determination of this request for
information is the Council’s FOI Complaints Procedure, a copy of which can
be obtained on request or is set out at:
[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Yours sincerely
Daniela
Daniela Hanson
Freedom of Information Administrator (Children's Services)
Support Services
Children's Services
Bedford Borough Council, Borough Hall, Cauldwell Street, Bedford, MK42 9AP
Tel: 01234 276749 (Internal 44749)
[2]www.bedford.gov.uk
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