Councillors in Wigan have criticised the social work team at Wigan Council for the lack of adoptions for children despite the improvements being made by the team. The council revealed that they had seen 13 children adopted in the last 12 months.
The reason given for this was the backlog in the courts with six months being the average time it is taking for them to go through the legal system, the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee was told. Coun Fred Walker was unimpressed by this statistic and wanted answers from the team as to why more adoptions had not taken place.
“13 children adopted in our borough over the last 12 months,” he queried. “It seems remarkably low.
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“I cannot believe it could be that low. I am just shocked at that. Can you tell me why it [the number of adoptions] is so pathetic?”
The officer explaining the ‘The Child’s Journey through our Services’ report said that this number will significantly increase in the coming months as the courts make their way through the backlogs. Answering another query as to why it takes so long to get through the courts, she explained that the number of complexities in different family situations determines the time in which cases get through the legal system.
The team were praised for their efforts in all other aspects of the report after they detailed the route a child goes through the care system. They used data to explain this to the chamber.
“We want all children in Wigan to be happy, healthy and safe; to feel listened to and to have the maximum opportunities to be ambitious,” the report said. “If children or their families need help and support it should be at the right time, by the right person and in the right place for them.”
The team explained that they had taken steps to ensure that the child’s view in order to gain insight into their family life. This is a key area of development for the team who are looking to increase the number of engagements they have with the children themselves.
The service lead for safeguarding has developed a ‘Safeguarding Soldiers’ group, made up of 10 children from a primary school and there is also a group of young people of secondary school age established.
They have met once and have suggested a newsletter going to primary school children which includes a range of relevant topics.
Delving deeper into the data, the report said: “There were 636 children looked after in Wigan on February 28, 2022. This is a rate of 92.29 per 10,000, just below our statistical neighbours. We work hard to ensure that children and young people have stable homes to live in.
“68.9 per cent of children who have been looked after for 2.5 years have lived in the same placement for the last two years. The statistical neighbour rate for this measure is 69 per cent.
“Nationally, this figure is 70 per cent. We have also reduced the number of children who have experienced three or more moves.
“There are currently 420 children in foster care in Wigan, of which 331 are placed with Wigan foster families. In the past year, we have refreshed our Deal for Foster Carers and improved our payments to carers.
“A paper was recently taken to the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Committee on care leavers in Wigan. There were 181 care leavers in Wigan as at the end of February 2022.
“We are in touch with 170 (94 per cent) of our care leavers.”
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