Number of Placements for Looked After Children 2016-2019 - Find a freedom of information request

Please use the attached spread-sheet for questions 1 to 7.

1. Combining the calendar years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had three or more placements during a single calendar year?

2. In each calendar year for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had three or more placements that year?

3. Combining the calendar years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had five or more placements during a single calendar year?

4. In each calendar year for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had five or more placements that year?

5. Combining the calendar years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had ten or more placements during a single calendar year?

6. In 2019, did any 'looked after' Children have ten or more placements during the calendar year?

7. In each calendar year for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, how many 'looked after' Children had ten or more placements that year?

If information is not available for calendar years, please use the corresponding financial years and state this to be the case.

Guidance notes:

Questions 1, 3 and 5 are asking for a single combined figure for all the years put together, but relate to the number of placements in a single calendar year (not the number of placements over the course of four years). Questions 2, 4 and 7 break these figures down by individual calendar year.

So for example, for question 5, if three children had ten or more placements in 2016, four children did in 2017, one child did in 2018, and seven children did in 2019, the question 5 response would be 15 (3 + 4 + 1 + 7). The responses for question 7 would be three in 2016, four in 2017, one in 2018 and seven in 2019.

This request is structured in this way to account for the possibility that figures for individual years may be low enough to trigger the FOI 'personal information' exemption. This is also why question 6 is written as a straight yes/no question.

Duty to assist

8. Under the duty to assist, please could the council tell me how it records the type of abuse where 'abuse or neglect' is the recorded category for 'looked after' Children? I am interested in whether the recorded abuse was directed towards the child, or instead towards another household member (e.g. mother).

a. Are these only recorded in each child's case file, or is this level of detail captured in the council's statistics? And what is the council's estimate of the time required to examine a single case file for that information?

Please use the attached spread-sheet for questions 1 to 7. Please let me know if you require any clarifications.

Please Note: The above information relates to the reporting years 2015/16 (i.e. 2016), 2016/17 (i.e. 2017), 2017/18 (i.e. 2018) and 2018/19 (i.e. 2019).

8. We do record type of abuse for all children who receive a service whether this is as a result of a child being looked after or requiring services under section 17 of the children act 2018.

a. The information is recorded in each child's case file. It would take between 30 minutes to an hour to look at each case file and ascertain the reasons for the referrals, the time differential will be based on a number of factors including the number of assessment undertaken and number of initial contacts.