Review of foster care service
Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,
On the 11th March 2014 Wirral Council made a payment of £7,500 to WIRED for a review of Wirral Council's foster care service.
I would guess that for £7,500 Wirral Council will have received as part of the review some type of written report from WIRED detailing WIRED's views on Wirral Council's foster care service.
Please could you provide in response to this FOI request the outcome of that review, that is the written report received by Wirral Council once the review was completed by WIRED.
Thank you.
I remind you of your s.16 duty to provide advice and assistance.
Yours faithfully,
John Brace
Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Review of foster care service'.
I have not received either a response to this request within the statutory twenty days or a reason why the information requested cannot be provided, hence the request for an internal review.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...
Yours faithfully,
John Brace
Good Morning
Thank you for your recent request made under the Freedom of Information Act, apologies for the delay in responding to you.
Please treat this email as Wirral Borough Council’s response to your request for an Internal review.
The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 as amended by the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review and Fostering Services (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2013 stipulate that each foster carer must be reviewed annually to ensure that they continue to meet national fostering standards. This requirement is commissioned out to WIRED who undertake individual foster carer reviews and submit them to Foster Panel for a recommendation to be made regarding continuance, or otherwise, of the foster carer’s suitability and registration.
The payment of £7,500 is one-quarter of the annual cost of this contract.
Reports written by WIRED are in respect of individual foster carers and their families rather than the overall services in general terms, and the Council therefore believes that if they were to provide this data then we would be breaching the 1st and 6th principle of The Data Protection Act 1998.
We believe this information relates to an individual(s) private life and the considers that there would be no expectation that any information about fostering services would be disclosed to a third party outside of the process. There is an expected level of confidentiality in regard to these processes and therefore, we believe, no expectation of disclosure.
The Council therefore maintains that providing this information to the requester could potentially identify a living individual. The Council further believes, disclosure of the information and potentially identifying individuals would not provide any greater understanding of the subject matter.
If you are dissatisfied with the result of your internal review, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner, whose address is
The Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
www.ico.gov.uk
Kind regards,
Sent on behalf of
Tracy O'Hare
Information Management
Transformation and Resources
Wirral Council
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