Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee - Tuesday 18 November 2025, 6:30pm

Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee
Tuesday, 18th November 2025 at 6:30pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Votes

Speaking:

Welcome to our Webcast Player.

The webcast should start automatically for you.

Webcast cameras are not operated by camerapersons; they are automated and linked to speaker microphone units. The aim is to provide viewers with a reasonable visual and audio record of proceedings of meetings held in public.

Note: If your webcast link appears not to be working, please return to the Webcast Home Page and try again, or use the help email address to contact us.

Start of webcast

Share this agenda point

Webcast Finished

Select an agenda point

Scroll with video

Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Please raise your hands and when you're not speaking, please put the microphone on mute and that way we can have a full transparency

Those members are in the chamber. Please speak on the microphone

so we would get full proper recording of it and

When you're not speaking, please switch the microphone off

Moving on to the next items.

An apology from anyone at all.

Apart from an apology from Shubho who sent his apology and also Councillor Aaron Mear.

Yes, Chair.

Steve Reddy has also sent his apologies as well.

Next is a decree of interest.

I have introduced myself already.

I have nothing to declare.

I'm going to go on my right -hand side, Shiblou.

From here, can you introduce yourself?

We may have some new people in the panel as well.

Hi, I'm Shiblou, the Muslim representative.

I do have a little bit of a declare.

I was the caregiver myself from the town council.

Thank you.

Johannon, I'm a co -opted person from the Zayasis of Westminster representative.

Hi everyone, it's Hasan Chaudhry, parent governor.

Hi everyone, I'm Hasnara Ali, parent governor.

Anyone online? Please introduce yourself, please.

Hello, G .R. Hi, I'm joining online. Sorry I won't be able to join in person.

It's me, Councillor Beccasil -Kanah from Bethlehem in East. Thank you.

Rachaela Rice, Co -Optee representing the Diocese of London. Thank you.

Next item is on the agenda is minutes from the previous meeting.

I guess the minutes accuracy is okay, unless anybody want to say on the minutes?

Thank you.

Next item is on the agenda is the corporate financing accountability.

I just switched the item reverse because I understand some people in here want to leave early.

So that's one of the reasons.

So, corporate parenting accountability, I understand that.

Also, I pass it over to the panel

who want to introduce themselves.

Thank you.

Okay, good evening everyone, thank you.

This is our annual corporate parenting

accountability report, and it goes to the heart

of our responsibilities as a council.

Every child in our care deserves the same ambition, love and opportunity that any parent would want for their own child.

The report shows real progress, stronger education engagement through our virtual school, increased voice and participation from children and young people,

and better pathways into apprenticeships, employment and independence for care experienced young people.

We've tightened our joint work with health partners, although we recognise there is more to do around camps, waiting times and timely specialist support.

Placement pressure remains a national issue, but we're responding with stronger local fostering recruitment,

improved commissioning and a focus on stability so children don't experience unnecessary moves.

We want every care experienced young person to feel supported well into adulthood

with housing, employment, opportunities and emotional support and a clear plan for their future.

This has been a major focus of improvement.

So I'll pass on to Susanna who will go through the report and we have a few people as well who will be joining us. Thank you.

Yes, so I'm going to introduce the team who will take you through the report.

Firstly and most importantly it's really lovely to have Leah here who's care experience, but is an apprentice of ours at the council as well, so delighted to have here.

We have group manager Benjamin Yeboah, head of service Leo Major and team manager Marsha

Lewis.

I'm going to hand over to Leo to take us through our progress.

Thank you very much, Susanna, and good evening, everyone.

I'm pleased to introduce this session around corporate parenting accountability.

So as the deputy mayor has already alluded to,

tonight we'll reflect on our progress,

we'll share some key outcomes and we'll discuss

how we can continue to improve the lives of children looked after

and care leavers in Tower Hamlets.

So the aims of the session as they're on the screen,

our aims tonight are clear.

We want to update you on children looked after and care leavers.

We want to explain how we meet our corporate parenting responsibilities

and raise awareness of what corporate parenting means for all council staff members and partners and

We'll also share how we're doing on some of the key outcomes around education health employment housing

And ask for your support in championing care experienced young people

Next please Jonathan

Okay

So one of the things we're really all of us are really proud to say is that Tower Hammerses Children's Services were rated

outstanding by offset in January of this year. It is not lost on us that we are

just a few days shy of exactly a year since the inspection took place in

November of 2024, which feels a lifetime away now, but the inspectors highlighted

our high quality support for care leavers and the strength of our corporate

parenting arrangements and importantly our care experienced young people have a

real seat at the leadership table as is demonstrated by Leah here tonight and

and they are fully involved in shaping our services.

Ofcette praised our tailored support for our care leavers

and our collaborative corporate parenting board,

which is chaired by the deputy mayor,

and they also emphasised the voice and strong involvement

of our care experience young people.

So we are really pleased on that.

Next please, one more thing.

So here's a snapshot of our annual report,

just showing the breadth of our work

for care experienced young people.

And again, it covers key areas like education, health,

and housing.

And it demonstrates our commitment

to transparency and accountability.

So these are the figures at the end of March 2024

and compared with the end of March 2025.

So in terms of numbers of children looked after,

our highest population, or cohort, if you will,

is the 16 to 17.

We got 99.

We had 37 unaccompanied asylum -seeking children. We prefer unaccompanied minors as a terminology we lose here. We use here rather

And we really have been doing a lot of work around long -term placement stability

In terms of accommodation a high proportion of our care experience young people are in suitable accommodation

96 % which is very much bucking some of the national trend

In terms of health, we are achieving really good health outcomes.

In terms of our children, we care for and care for young people having good health assessments

and dental cheques.

Of course, a lot of work around education, employment and training.

62 % of our pupils make an expected progress in the spring term, 2024 -25.

This was 58 % the previous year.

98 % of pupils had a personal education plan meeting.

It was 99 % the previous year, and 98 % of allocated care experience young people had a pathway

plan, which is again a fantastic outcome, and 72 % of allocated care experience young

people were in employment, education or training, again, is well above sort of national averages.

So again, something we're quite pleased about. Next, please, Jonathan.

So in terms of just thinking about where most of our children in care live, and you'd hear

me being very careful about our language, they're technically called placements, but

we don't like to think about where placing our children is where our children live, so

that's very important for us. So most of our children looked after lived within 20 miles

of their home, ensuring they remain connected to their communities.

And for those who are placed further away, we work closely with other councils and agencies

to make sure that they and their families still receive the support and opportunities

that they need, and making sure that those activities and support remains accessible,

even where they live outside of our borough, and that there's the careful multiagency collaboration

that ensures that that takes place and that when we do offer events we tailor that to

Location and their availability as well. So that's really important for us

And again, this is just taking a look at our strategy and governance

arrangements so our corporate parenting board which is chaired by the

Deputy mayor and I'm pleased to say councilman is also a member of that board

It provides strategic oversight and ensures we fulfil our corporate responsibilities

the board includes representatives from across the council health services and foster carers and it works very closely with our

children living in care council

Our corporate parenting strategy which we launched in

2023 is driven by a dedicated operational group that meets monthly to ensure that we

are delivering on our action plan in relation to that.

And that's driving our progress and monitoring performance and ensuring children and young

people's voices are heard.

And we publish a report annually on the work of that board.

As part of the work that we do, we are required in law to publish a local offer for care leavers,

and that's to make sure we provide information and support available to our care experience

young people and we in Tawa Hamlets have a full guide and a summary version and just

there we have a quote from Ofsted during their inspection of Tawa Hamlets' children's services

last year in November where they said the local offer is easy to understand, it's comprehensive,

it's easily accessible for young people via a link on the council's website and on an

We have a digital app called the KnowNow app.

Information is translated into various languages which reflects the demographics of our care

experience cohort in Tower Hamlets.

It is an ambitious offer and so as an example it provides council tax exemption regardless

of where our children live up and down the country up until the age of 25 and it also

includes priority housing and something that's very different about the way our local offer

to how a hamlet is, you get the priority housing and you get three offers of choosing the home

you want to live in because that choice is so important because this is going to be your

permanent home.

So we're very proud of our local offer and again what Ofsted had to say about it and

ensuring that it is available in an accessible format for our care experienced young people.

Next please.

So just thinking about in care experience as a protected characteristic, in July 2023,

this council adopted care experience as a protected characteristic, recognising the

unique challenges faced by our care experience young people.

This commitment has led to new initiatives, including apprenticeships within the council

and enhanced housing support to prevent homelessness.

It is a recognition of the challenges faced by care leavers and it highlights that addressing these barriers and improving outcomes

is everyone's business across the council and that's within the direct rate across the wider council and also with our

partner agencies

And it's just outlines there are some of the developments that have happened with that in terms of our apprenticeships

We've had two phases delivered the learning and expertise gain has enhanced our approach to

The second phase which we are in currently, we have 11 care leave apprentices who have

successfully completed that programme and we're moving towards getting them into permanent

employment with the council and we have 14 in the pipeline so we are very pleased with

those numbers. And again, another key aspect of that commitment was prevention of homelessness

so we have a joint housing protocol agreed with our colleagues in the housing and regeneration

Directorate on prevention and again increasing housing support for care

leavers. We're one of the few councils that has a dedicated leaving care

housing officer and that's for bespoke trauma -informed housing advice and

support so that's something that we are really pleased about recognising there's

a lot more we need to do about care experience as a protected characteristic.

So some of you in the room may have heard of Kit Kat Terrace. It's in Bow. It is our care lever hub.

Our care leaders have described it to Ofsted as a home away from home.

We've invested in the refurbishing of Kit Kat Terrace and creating a multifunctional hub for our young people.

There were new facilities including a kitchen, games area, prayer and meditation room, a

new IT suite and revamped outdoor space.

And coming up in the next few months, this hub will also support health assessments taking

place there.

So it's a less clinical environment, but it just ensures that important aspect of care

takes place, workshops and social activities.

So ongoing development of the KidCAT terrorist and the use of it is really going to depend on council and partner support.

And we're pleased to say that we do get really strong support from our partners.

The Department for Work and Pensions works out of their education and training employment.

Tutors work out of KidCAT.

And our health and emotional well -being partners Step Forward works out of KidCAT.

So we're quite pleased with that.

Over the last several years, we have done a lot around developing education, employment

and training offers and our through care team includes specialist advisors who help young

people secure roles in the civil service.

The civil service internships came for care leavers, our highest numbers of applications

yet in the last sort of three, four years.

I think we had something like 15 applicants of whom 10 have secured apprenticeships in

the civil service internship scheme, which is a very competitive scheme and we're quite

pleased with that number, but also securing roles in the NHS and beyond.

Our virtual school for children looked after is expanding to become a virtual college with

the aim of supporting young people up to the age of 25 with work skills, experience and

vocational enrichment.

So that's another bit of our success that we are really happy about.

So just thinking of, as I've already said, about our successful pre -apprenticeship programme,

building on our successful phase one of the programme, 11 young people began the pre -apprenticeship

training this year, all of whom have now secured positions.

The programme includes trauma -informed training for managers and dedicated mentors creating

lasting pathways to employment.

Reflecting on health and emotional well -being

for the children we care for and care experience

young people, council and health services,

we've worked collaboratively to support children

through warm and nurturing care,

to stay physically and emotionally healthy.

And some of the progress highlights there is included,

we have a new interim designated doctor

for looked after children and a designated nurse

for looked after children joining the Northeast London

Health and Care Partnership.

And those are the strategic level roles,

just providing that challenge and support for us.

Again, we have an enhanced initial health assessment process,

particularly for our separated unaccompanied minor children.

And we've talked about our new mental health and emotional wellbeing offer

that was introduced at Kit Kat Terrace with regular slots on a non -clinical basis

makes it more likely, our children and young people of Tolis,

they're more likely to engage.

And that is something that we are quite pleased about.

and the dedicated space as part of the refurbishment, one of the commitments was to be able to have

those assessments take place at Kit Kat.

So we have a health assessment room space in Kit Kat and we're just getting the last

bits of the equipment in with the view that those health appointments can take place there

rather than at Milan Hospital as more appropriate.

In terms of housing support and transitions to adulthood, we are quite pleased to say

we strengthen our housing support for our care leavers, focusing on those aged 21 to

25 who aren't yet ready for permanent housing.

Our Leaving Care Housing Officer provides bespoke, trauma -informed advice, helping to

reduce homelessness and support successful transitions to adulthood.

Some of the outcomes of that work just includes that we have reduced temporary accommodation

and there are successful transitions to sustainable housing. Again, we have a very, I would say,

competitive in terms of what local authorities offer in terms of our housing offer for our

and enhance support, including financial support, so that when you get your first home, you

settle into it.

And one of our challenges in doing that is, would this be good enough for our own child?

If you're thinking of your own child to leaving home and setting up their own first home,

what would you do for them as a good parent?

And that's a challenge to make sure we're doing that as good corporate parents.

And I'm pleased to say that we've decided to extend our Leaving Care Housing Officer

in post. I think this is going to be, we're going on year four or five now, I think, so

we're quite pleased with that because we've seen the benefit of that as part of housing

support and transitions to adulthood.

Next please, Jonathan.

Okay. So in October, we celebrated nearly 100 foster and kinship carers at our annual

event recognising their dedication. Many of our foster carers who attended that event

have over 20 years of service. And this year we put a special spotlight on kinship carers

who step in to care for children often when their parents may not be able to do so. We

were delighted to have giving the guest address this year Dr. Janine Davis who is the National

Kinship Care Ambassador, who really challenged us about centering love in all the work we

do for the children we care for and care experience young people.

So thinking about how members, including members of the Scrutiny Committee, can help support

our care experience young people, one of our challenges is we really urge all members to

help raise awareness of care experience as a

protected characteristic and to champion our care

experience young people.

And that could include, could you mentor a young

person, could you connect us with businesses in the

community, or could you help us with opening new

opportunities in the borough?

Just some ways to think about it.

So, for example, help us to partner with key

stakeholders in business hubs, areas open to new doors.

We have the benefit of having Canary Wharf as part of our borough, and so opportunities

to link in there and harness those relationships.

So again, thinking of our future focus and next steps, looking ahead we are preparing

to implement the Families First for Children programme, which will bring whole system reform

to children's social care.

We recognise that a lot of the detail is still emerging, but we know we'll need to, for example,

publish a kinship care local offer in the same way that that's a statutory requirement

to publish a care leave a local offer.

We need to extend educational support and expand corporate parenting responsibilities

to more public bodies. And of course we're waiting for the guidance and most importantly

funding to go with that. But notwithstanding those things, our commitments remain strong.

The Families First for Children programme is going to be about whole system reform. And

again it's about we just really emphasising the need for continued commitment with our

partners around all of that.

Next please Jonathan.

And then finally it's just to say thank you so much for your attention and just listening

to us, listening to me.

I welcome your questions and I look forward to your insights on how we can continue to

improve outcomes for our care experienced young people and the children that we care

for here in Taba Hamlets.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentations, lovely presentation.

Thank you for giving your thought on the end of the report and everything.

I'm going to need to declare myself as well.

I do see on the Pre -Enancing Board as well.

So for interest of that, just in a please, just declare on that.

Also for care leavers, do you want to say anything before we move into questioning?

Do you want to say anything about that?

You got the opportunity to say, share your thoughts, anything like that?

Just checking if it works.

So my experience has been a rollercoaster,

but all I can say is the Leaving Care team and Children's Services have gone to great lengths

into making sure I'm still here attending, showing up my best self,

bringing what I can to my work world.

And I just want to say that I appreciate everything they've done for me so far

because I wouldn't know where I would be if I wasn't recognised for someone that has potential

as a young person that has come from an exploited lifestyle

and to turn it around completely is quite miraculous to see.

But I have to give it to the team around me.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

I'm going to move on to my colleagues for questioning.

Okay, let me just get some names.

Ship Lu and then Jim, Hassan.

Okay, Ship Lu, do you want to go question please?

Thank you all for the presentation. I did visit Keke Taris a few years ago as part of the school team and chair will do to revisit again.

Just to please, just to note down that we want to do the visit again as a follow up.

I want to ask...

Yes.

I appreciate what you said.

Sorry, I forgot your name.

Leah. Sorry, Leah.

So what do you think that they can improve overall

as a corporate parent?

I know they've supported you a lot, but I'm sure there's room

for improvement.

What do you think they can improve?

I think it's important for not just the team but for the young people to be able to have the confidence to approach the team for support.

Because as long as it's there, I know as a young person myself I find it quite difficult.

And knowing what areas I need to, you know, confront the team and say look this is where I need help.

I'm lacking but I don't really have the confidence to say that I'm lacking.

I guess as a young person it comes with pride, you don't want to tell people where you're going wrong.

So I feel like the approach and having that openness is quite difficult but just a reminder,

letting the young people know that it's always there.

You know, consistent communication I think is very important for young people.

just to have that there and to know that someone is always there to talk to you.

Because I feel like as time goes on distance can create blockages in terms of communication.

And you don't really feel like you have that bond anymore to kind of approach them.

Whereas if it was just like on a, not all the time like weekly basis,

but every night they're sending them emails, making sure that they're invited to all the events,

making sure they know what opportunities are always there.

and yeah, I'm not too sure what else I can elaborate on.

I feel quite content with the support I've been given

by the team, so I don't really know where the lack is

for myself anyway, but I'm not sure as an overall.

Thank you.

Sorry, just following on that.

So I understand like you have PAs

and you're supposed to meet every what, six weeks?

remind me please every six weeks every six weeks minimum in terms of seeing our

young people our pathway plans every six to twelve months isn't it yes I must

have working one to this console with the living kitten so what's your

caseload for the PA because I know a lot of powers I've worked in Newham I've

worked in one of our work in Westminster and the same thing I'm sure like me I

if you have any PAs around here, they will be able to tell you it's overcrowded and

maybe that's worth leading to what Leah is saying about the whole communication. Is it

just, oh, I have to see them every six weeks, once communication, are you okay, and then

oh, can you meet me before we have a pathway plan? I know that's happened. And obviously

that depends on the PA, right? So how do you ensure that you have enough ratio to the PA?

Because obviously, if Leah also mentioned that, more constant communication would improve

your service.

So how would you ensure that you can do that?

And please, if you can remind me how many case load per PA as well.

Thank you for your question.

My name is Benjamin.

And for PAs, the maximum they have is 20 cases.

So PAs are between 18 and 20 cases, so it's manageable for us compared to other local

authorities.

Now you talked about communication with young people.

In addition to having an individual PAs contacting young people, we have a Monday and a Wednesday

late night sessions where we have PAs, we have managers present, so young people can

turn up any time on a Monday, on a Wednesday, we close late around 8pm and they can talk

to anybody, talk to a manager, even if their PA is not around, they have their PA's manager

around.

We also have an app where every young person has an app where activities that we do are

on the app, it's called the KnowNow app.

So in terms of communication, in addition to talking to your personal PA, you can turn

up, communicate to the PA, communicate with other young people or find out what is happening

in the service through the KnowNow app.

So we have a number of channels where young people meet the service.

We run a whole service and so even though you have one PA, the whole service is available

for a young person.

Can I make another suggestion?

mandatory therapy for care leaders. I think it's important as we have a high volume in mental health in the leave -in care and even children services I feel like it'll be important for people to have a space to talk to you.

Which is not full stop on but I feel like sometimes you need to kind of put it there for them to come to it.

As an experienced person I would never voluntarily gone to therapy.

But if it was there and recognising that it's actually helping then I would want to keep going back.

Can I just say as well in terms of communication we have a participation worker, Abdul, who works with us.

So that's another person, and that's somebody under Young Tower Hamlets, and there's a participation

team as well that help us in terms of engaging and working with our children and care leavers.

As well, we are looking at different ways of communicating.

So one of the things we're looking at, how we might be able to get funding for one of

the rooms to be a podcast room.

And so just thinking, we trialled that before, we haven't got the equipment at this time,

but just thinking about how's the best way to get communication with our young people

and hear different voices.

And then in terms of mental health and emotional support, we do have somebody at Kit Kat late

night, I think it's Monday and Wednesdays, for emotional support, but we're continuing

to look at what our emotional wellbeing and mental health support is for our caregivers.

It sounds great, obviously, in terms of you have all these provisions in place, but I

can only see some barriers to that.

You mentioned that you've got a lot of young people within 20 miles of London living.

20 miles is still quite a distance.

With the universal credit amount, them having to travel to you guys for those communications,

that's costly for somebody coming on a bus or a train.

Do you provide for those, I know you provide maybe travel cards for education, but for

those visits, do you provide?

In terms of numbers that our PAs have, we keep them manageable because obviously we

want them to have meaningful relationships.

But yes, in terms of making sure that our young people can access support, we don't

want them to overextend the might be limited resources

that they already have.

So yes, we would provide in terms of travel.

We go out and see them.

I think one of the things I said is notwithstanding that, yes,

20 miles doesn't sound a lot, but it could be

quite a significant distance.

We do our best to link with our fellow councils and support

and what's available in your local community.

Because it may be that even if you want to travel,

you can't just because of college or life or whatever

else.

and virtual means might be the most suitable way

of communicating.

So it's really exploring what is locally.

And if that needs to be resourced,

we look at that and we resource it.

Within reason, of course, like every council would.

But ultimately, we are needs -led.

And so it's about really important to making sure

that those local resources can be tapped into

and things we do to encourage our young people to come.

and if that includes making sure that they get there,

via providing travel, we do that.

Thank you for your questioning.

I think others will need to give me a chance as well.

So, Joanna?

Thank you for your presentation,

and thanks Leah for joining us.

It's really nice to have someone here,

sometimes to hear from the co -face as such.

Just reading through, I'd like a little bit more information because it actually sounds quite interesting.

So we have got one of the things that came out in the office aid was that children have a seat at the leadership table.

But I'd really like to just dig a bit deeper, so how are care experienced young people involved in decision making and influencing the service per se?

So I'd just like to hear a bit about that. But also, sorry, I feel like we're going to bang on this now.

And I'm really sorry because I've also had a question about the placement location.

Sorry again, the word placement. But you said only a small proportion leave a significant distance.

What's a small proportion? Because when we're saying, if we're saying 20 miles, that's one fifth almost.

So what do you class as significant?

Thank you.

So the first of your questions was about how young people are influencing the service.

As Suzanne has mentioned, we have our participation officer who engages with all.

We have a children living in care council, so that's a representative body of care experience

young people, and there's a junior clique, teen clique, senior clique, so it's stratified

into age groups.

You don't have to be a member of that, but we encourage all of our care expansion people

and children we care for to be members of that.

It is a way of coming together, sharing their views, sharing what it is they want, challenging

us as senior leaders.

They are represented on the corporate parenting board that the deputy mayor chairs.

They were very instrumental in actually our corporate parenting strategy.

they were interviewed by Ofsted and we regularly seek feedback from them through surveys, forums,

just other means of really making sure that we're repeatedly hearing their voices.

Children who are in care would have statutory child looked after reviews.

They have independent reviewing offices who sits in my colleague's service, I'm safeguarding

and equality assurance, the head of that service is just behind me.

And again, that's another means of them influencing and shaping services.

We have regular quality assurance auditing cycles.

We are currently in the auditing cycle for my service.

The report is coming out Thursday and we're looking at it.

And again, that's telling us what are children and young people saying about the quality

of our service and our support and do they feel we're listening to them.

And also as part of that service too, there's a statutory duty to offer advocacy.

So we have quorum voices, our commissions, advocacy service, again, representing the

views of children we care for and care experience young people.

And they do challenge me and hold me to account when they don't feel something is being done

correctly.

And I welcome that.

So it's different means, sort of, I suppose, tailored to the way in which any child or

young person would want to express those views.

And I'm very honest about if we can't do something, I'll say, but I'll also always try all the

of us to offer an alternative just to make sure that their voices are captured.

And then I think your other question was about just sort of thinking about distance placed

more than 20 miles from home.

So the most recent stats we have here reflects it was 18 .7 percent.

That was 53 children.

And again, we know that's a, and there was some that the distance isn't recorded, so

of course I'm going to go back and challenge why is that to make sure that we're just getting

that data correct, because that's 13%, and as you say, that is in a small proportion

when you think of the numbers of children.

There'll be various factors that influence location.

It'll be, you know, for sometimes for safety, sometimes because that is the most suitable

environment about in terms of making sure that they can get the right support with the

right home, whether that is a foster family or a children's home or supported accommodation

provision, just making sure that that is right for them.

But again, we try to maintain those local connexions as much as possible.

So in an ideal world, I would want all Tower Hamlets children to be cared for and care

experienced young people to be in Tower Hamlets.

We know there's a positive of suitable provision, homes for children in the areas that they

live in, and it's very much part of the national reforms that's going to be looking at what

can we do to increase that.

So it's something that we are mindful of and as soon as it's safe where possible to bring those children back into borough

We do aim to do that. I hope that answers your questions

Sorry, I thought that I wanted precise numbers. But what do you class a significant distance then? Is it 20 miles or is it 25 or?

So in terms of in terms of home parameters, there are two things there is

out of borough, which is our five neighbouring areas, and then at a distance is anything outside of that.

So we would say significant is anything more than 20 miles, and we're considering sort of, if you will, national government parameters about children being placed at a distance.

And again it's not lost on me, it's easy for me to say well if it's less than 20 miles that's not significant.

It might be significant to a child because they're not in their local community so it's something we always think about.

And I sign off any children placed at a distance and in that report that is the views of the child or the young person,

the views of the independent reviewing officer as well as

The PA or social workers views I consider that before signing off an after distance placement

Can I just just I don't know I'm gonna be really bad with this but

It says only a small proportion. Well, actually that's 20 % nearly and that's not one fifth

So I wouldn't cross that as a small proportion

Personally, sorry

Thank you, we welcome that challenge to reflect on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to be quick.

What are the headlines, performance trends for the looked after children and care leavers,

particularly education progress and health assessment and housing stability?

What are the headline performances showing on trends for the looked after children and

care levers, particularly education progress and health assessment and housing priority

and stability?

So you say what are the headlines?

Yes, performance, headline performance.

So in terms of some of the headline performance, in terms of health and education and housing,

In terms of numbers, I'd have to get back to you to be specific about, but our performance

in terms of care leaver data, in terms of care leavers within suitable accommodation

is, you know, is it, yeah, it's.

So just in terms of our sort of key performance indicators, and we kind of talked about the

main ones that are measured. Yeah, the Care Leaver data is always consistently 95 % plus

and that's important for us. But the key performance indicators are things of, you know, going

back to Ms. Hannon's comments about, well, you have these children at a distance, are

they being visited? So that's a key performance indicator for us. Are you actually seeing

children where they live? Are they having their health assessments on time? Are they

engage in advocacy and do they have that as an offer?

And also too, one of the things, because it is part of, for children we care for and care

experience young people, looking at permanence, are we moving towards achieving permanence

for them in a timely way?

So if we are in court proceedings, care proceedings you might hear of called for example, the

government sets a target and the court system sets a target of you should be finishing those

proceedings in 26 weeks.

We know that we are not necessarily achieving that in the court system in East London and that would be for various reasons

but you know

Every time that's delayed that's delaying a decision for that child and that child being able to know what's going to be the permanence for them

So that's another key indicator that we are watching very closely because that needs to improve and also to just achieving permanence in terms of you

Know is a child able to return home?

Are they going to live with their foster carer permanently?

Or are they going to find permanence outside the home,

either within their family or in their wider network

or beyond that?

So those are just some of the sort of other sort

of key performance indicators that we

are looking at measuring, if that answers your question.

And just in terms of scrutiny about performance,

there's a performance surgery every month with myself.

There's weekly performance surgeries with Leo and with Ben as well, as well as the corporate

director chairs are achieving excellence for children board where it is all scrutinised

there.

In the performance surgery we literally go child by child in terms of making sure that

performance is being met and if it isn't in terms of what's the reasons.

For example, it could be in terms of review medical, a child who's 16 has decided they

don't want to go, so then we'll think about what creative strategies we can do to try

and encourage them, or say about dental as well, which we have to do in terms of helping

young people there, it might be a voucher or something, or a phone call, or different

ways but we're always monitoring it.

Thank you.

Dr Phillips on the line.

He will put his hands up.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very, very impressed by this, the results, the programme, the presentation.

and one of the things that I think is a fantastic thing you've got is this experience with the

pre -apprenticeship programme. And I bang the drum about this, a pre -apprenticeship training

just seems to be one of the key things that has been missing and this gets jobs and I

it ought to be able to be expanded more widely but I mean I know we're talking

about the care context so it's a really big plus for that and Leo were you part

of the 11 or can you tell us anything about your experience of that thank you

So did you get that?

So he was having a malfunction with the fingers flashing.

So the question is your experience with the apprenticeship?

Yeah, my experience with the apprenticeship has been a learning curve.

It's been different for me.

I've come from no education due to being homeless from a young age.

So I never really got to complete my qualifications or exams.

But being given this opportunity I've made the most, they gave me an option to opt out of my maths

due to new regulations, you don't have to do it, it's no longer mandatory.

But I decided to stay so I want to complete it and just show that I have my qualifications, I can do it.

And with the support of the team and even with my line manager, Tanya Sesser,

They've put in place a lot of strategies that will help me with my learning difficulties get through the apprenticeship as well.

So yeah, it's been good and I really appreciate the journey.

Thank you. Dr Phillips, do you want to ask any supplementary questions?

Right, okay, well for officials, I think this is such a good idea, this programme, I just

wonder if the officials who've been running this, what are the constraints, is it possible

to have more?

So it's a question along those lines, what are the constraints on why there couldn't

be more?

Thank you.

If I could just answer that extremely quickly, yes. Thank you. Thank you for that, Dr. Rice.

I think one of the things we, again, we took the learning from the first phase and as you

said that pre -apprenticeship programme is so important really about that preparatory work

and making it a trauma -informed programme. So we tapped into a provider who specialises

in that because we realised it was a gap. And also one of the things we recognised too

was some of our own limits as managers and managing apprentices as well.

And managers, we figured out we need that support too,

to just make sure we want it to be a success.

And I think the success is seen in the second strand of that programme.

All of the apprentices who did complete that programme have been offered

and now we have 14 going through the second phase of that.

So, you know, we are working within the resources that we have, but there is certainly the commitment

from the council. You know, we've made care experience a protected characteristic, and

we want everything that goes with that. So, again, it's just making sure that the programme

is a success and we all tap into that, and making sure that we access the right training

and development for it. So we would say that was a constraint the first time around. We

We went from five to 11, we now are 14.

I'm hoping that number grows even more exponentially

in the years to come.

Thank you.

Thank you for your questions.

And finally, at least Jennifer has a question.

My question is regarding what happens

to the young people when they leave care.

So how many leaving care housing officers

do you have at present?

So there's one Leaving Care Housing Officer at present for how many people?

So she, sorry, so our Leaving Care Housing Officer isn't specifically allocated to any

one young person, but we had a completed report, I think in the last year of her role, she

worked with 27 care experienced young people to help them get onto their permanent accommodation

to prevent homelessness, to prevent the inappropriate use of temporary accommodation and that's

again providing trauma -informed housing support just to working alongside the PAs and social

workers and the team managers to extend that support. We would ideally like to see that

extended but that's our numbers I think currently that she's worked with. And Ben is just writing.

And of course, yes, too, we have a housing panel that's in through care and again they

review young people who are potentially ready for their nomination and that's ensuring they've

done things like, and we have our own certified independent living skills assessment which

Ofsted commented positively on and that's just making sure there's the right support

around that young person.

Because we want them to maintain their tendencies.

And then final point on this is I made reference to the joint housing protocol that we've developed

and in the previous year the government passed regulations that says we cannot make a care

experience young person intentionally homeless without the sign off of Susanna and her equivalent

in housing.

I am pleased to say we haven't even had to exercise that option because we don't make

our young people intentionally homeless.

That's just not what we do in Tower Hamlets.

So I hope that answers your question.

That's amazing. What's your relationship like to the Town Housing Council housing department?

Because we're in a housing crisis, are you getting enough housing allocated to your teams in order to be able to house all these young people permanently?

Yeah, we work really well with our housing department. One of the directors of housing

Karen Swift sits on the corporate parenting board alongside, you know, the deputy mayor

and again, offers that challenge and scrutiny and support as well to us. Care leavers in

terms of our housing allocations policy, they are banned to a so that is literally one band

below emergency accommodation, you must be housed.

Again, within our housing allocations policy,

care leavers get three offers,

and every other authority that I've ever worked in,

it's one, you get one offer, and if you refuse that,

that's it, we've done our duty.

In Talbot Hamlets, we get three,

because we want people to have that choice.

And also too, there's various housing,

it could be council housing, it could be housing association,

It might be housing across the boundary.

So notwithstanding, yes, we know there's a positive of housing, that commitment is

there for our care leavers in terms of the it's very much clearly in our housing allocations

policy.

So we have a really good relationship with housing where we can go back and offer that

scrutiny and challenge.

One of the additional roles that is part funded from children's services is a accommodation

and procurement officer in housing just again to make sure that we are securing the best

housing and I know with a lot of the housing being built by the council one of its commitments

is protecting some of that allocation for particular cohorts of the population which

includes care leavers.

And final point on that is very recently the government in terms of housing allocation,

a care leaver no longer needs to meet the local residents requirement.

You can present it any authority.

And so, yeah, we work really closely with housing and that's one of the strengths in

certainly the relationship I have to say here.

Thank you for your presentations.

It was a very thoughtful and thorough presentation.

I want to add to it as well, your Kitkat terrace.

I did visit during the summer after the reopening of the Deputy Mayor.

It looked impressive.

I'm sure some of the care -livers there do love that place as well.

It looks nice. Thank you for coming today.

If you wish to stay, you can stay or you could leave.

And I'm moving towards the end where you will day two.

It won't.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming. Sorry for the delay. We are just super over because of the young person coming in.

We will switch to the last item. You have got about 10 minutes to present it before we move to questioning.

I'm sure most of my colleagues have read the report so it would be good to have a skeleton report from you guys.

Thank you. Over to you.

I just want to introduce the range of people that we have here today.

We've got D .I.

Conrand Trotman from the police, we've got Macy McMillan from Royal London Public Protection,

we've got Gersel Beckham, our group manager for exploitation, Stuart Andrews, our head

of service for family support and child protection, children with disabilities and exploitation,

and plus Geraldine O 'Donnell, who is our multi -agency child exploitation co -chair with

Comrade and our Head of Quality Assurance.

So I'm going to hand over to Gersel, who will briefly go through our slides.

Thank you.

So just in terms of the aims of the session, I thought it would be quite useful for everyone

to have a bit of a kind of snapshot of our local data about exploitation and violence,

and then I'll move on to talk about how we as a partnership respond to exploitation and violence and what we do including

Prevention then I'll move on to discuss to go what's working well within the council and as a partnership

and then

Some of the challenges and areas of further development and how we can improve our responses to exploitation

So hopefully I'll be able to meet those goals

So this slide just provides a snapshot of the past six months in terms of violence and what we know.

So we've kind of, just to say that we're looking at victims and suspects under the age of 25.

So although in terms of children's social care our legal responsibility and obligations up until the age of 18,

it's quite important I guess to think about young people and adolescents up until the age of 25.

So having a look at these two graphs, in Quarter 1 we had 552 victims and in Quarter 2 we had

showing a decline in young people involved in violence.

And then the second graph is incidents of victims and suspects in the last six months.

You can probably see that June was a bit of a peak for victims under the age of 25,

and there was quite a bit of a decline actually in July and August.

And we kind of do see that pattern as children are off, it's kind of summer holidays,

And although we kind of suspect that there may be an increase in violence, there's a lot of kind of measures that are put in place in the council to try to ensure that we are kind of addressing violence and making sure that that doesn't take place or at least we try and reduce it.

And then the next slide is around our local data around missing children.

So missing children in the last six months, if we look at missing from home, it's quite a repeated pattern where we have more children who go missing from care.

As you can see, most of our missing from care children are males, and then in terms of missing from home, we've got more females who go missing.

The second chart just shows a breakdown of our missing episodes, again just seeing that missing episodes from care is a lot more higher than children missing from home.

It is a national theme where children missing from care go missing more regularly, we have more children missing from care as opposed to missing from home.

The third part of the presentation, the slide, is a breakdown of our top five missing children,

where as you can see in quarter one, 55 % of the missing children were children we care for,

and then in quarter two that was 48, so roughly about 50 % of the missing episodes are actually children in care.

Moving on to return to our conversation, so for those who don't know, every child who goes missing,

Missing, we've got responsibility and duty to offer return to home conversation to a child whether they're missing from home or whether they're missing from care.

In terms of I guess what the data tells us of the acceptance rate, they are children more likely to accept a return to home conversation than missing from home.

As we can see in quarter it was 49 % and then in quarter two that increased to 53 %

and then missing from care it was 36 % in quarter one and 44 % from missing from care.

I guess just to say that return to home conversations are something that children,

particularly those children who go missing repeatedly, are quite, find the process quite daunting

and not necessarily willing or as practitioners we find it a bit difficult to engage with

them throughout the return to home conversation process.

However, we are mindful that, so for example I guess just talking about the top five missing

children from care, we are very dedicated in ensuring that we provide support to those

children on an ongoing basis.

Five of those children will have support work within the exploitation service just to ensure

that we continue the engagement and the intervention.

So I guess just to kind of highlight, although the figures for return to home conversations

seem quite low, we are very kind of dedicated and committed to ensuring that the support

that our most vulnerable children who go missing are supported on an ongoing basis.

Then the next slide is around the local missing hub that the police have newly introduced

as a response to responding to missing people that I will pass over to Conrad to go through.

Hello everyone, my name is Conrad Trotman. I'm the DI for the borough of Hackney and

Toulamalitz and I look after the teams that respond to exploitation and missing adults

The local missing hub itself, as Gersal nodded to, probably, and I'm mindful of time, Chair,

the history of the MPS in terms of response to missing people, namely children, has been pretty poor.

And the Casey report highlighted that fact.

And the response from the MPS, Metropolitan Police, was to look at how we can professionalise this

but also make the response across the NPS and the 12 BCUs or the 32 boroughs consistent.

So we now have, rather than it being transcended over three different teams, responding to and understanding missing,

there are five units and teams within Teller Hamlets and Hackney that service all missing reports.

And that's consistent across the NPS. That means you get a greater understanding in terms of the risk rating,

you get a unilateral response to the risk rating and management, but also the understanding

of what that risk looks like and how we can post -return home or during that missing episode

respond from a law enforcement point of view, whether that is an interception of perpetrators

or managing the safeguard of that child.

I'm mindful of time but I'll quickly be brief in terms of, but also it's that national really in terms of the support from those officers as well.

We were getting officers that were in that arena that have never dealt with missing persons before.

And I think that's a failure on our behalf in response to failure for those children as well.

So it's professionalised, so all those people that sit under me have had the training, have had the skills.

It's going to take time because we implemented it in two phases, 1st June and 1st September.

Tower Hamlets and Hackney were in phase 2, so we've been rolling this for three months.

But what we have had is a consistency of oversight by me and a detective sergeant that sits beneath me,

that's been exposed to for a number of years complex and serious investigations.

So I will set all the strategies in response to missing people regardless of the risk rating.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentations.

Do you want to carry on?

Yeah, I'll carry on.

So, MACE is our multi -agency child exploitation panel that takes place on a monthly basis.

It's our kind of strategic meeting and having oversight around children that we know are at risk of exploitation and violence.

Pre -MACE is the meeting that we have, it's a partnership meeting again, and we go through all of the children,

all of our most high risk children that we're concerned for around exploitation and violence.

And this is just a kind of snapshot around, this is based on the risk assessments that practitioners complete.

So I guess some highlights from this is that criminal exploitation is our kind of most

kind of area of concern and area of risk for children and followed by serious youth violence and gang affiliation.

And then this is just a little bit about the

exploitation of services, the service that I'm from and a bit of some highlights around multi -agency working. So we have daily partnership intelligence meeting

including various services such as the police, public protection, young talent, youth justice.

We also got a specialist intervention element to our service where we have seven support workers in total

doing one to one intensive engagement and intervention work with our at -risk and at -most -risk children within the borough.

We've got a parent and carer support offer, so we've got a dedicated worker who offers intervention and support to parents

and carers who have children that are at high risk of exploitation.

And we have three coordinators within the service who offers consultations and support to practitioners,

whether that's social workers, early help, education, health around workforce development and how they can engage with adolescents.

And in addition to that we also have some training on our partners.

The Integrated Gangs Unit is co -located within our service.

We work very closely with them. They attend our MACE, our pre -MACE panel.

They also are part of our daily intelligence briefing in the morning.

So they share our information, any information and intelligence that comes to their attention overnight.

and I guess bridging the gap between enforcement and safeguarding and ensuring the opportunities

to intervene at the early stage so they're quite a crucial part to our service and the organisation.

They also conduct regular home visits to children that come to notice before carrying weapons,

offering kind of diversion and ensuring that they kind of from an early intervention perspective

that they kind of have those initial contacts just to ensure how best children can be supported.

Now I'm going to move, I'm really mindful of time, in terms of public protection and the kind of joint work that they do.

So at Royal Luns Hospital primary schools are offered risk awareness sessions around exploitation and they also offer parent engagement workshops.

So that's another offering place for our most vulnerable children and families.

and then again moving on to public protection integrated enforcement so

they hold fortnightly position crime fighting tasking meetings again another

multi -agency forum and then kind of talking about how best in terms of

deployment and looking at the kind of different areas and locations that need

to be targeted to minimise the risks. Again as mentioned the daily information

sharing is also quite crucial which they engage with.

And then just moving on to public protection, do quite a bit.

Test purchases, so just in terms of vapes, alcohol that are kind of conducted in CCTV.

So if there's any, so they alert the police or the enforcement officers if there's any

suspicious activities, rapid response to kind of manage.

and then enforcement officers are also trained around recognising signs of exploitation and safeguarding concerns.

We've got five knife bins in the local authority and also there are some bleed control kits,

there's 23 bleed control kits in the borough, particularly in areas that are kind of known for serious violence.

And then I just want to talk a little bit about our kind of closely working partnership with Yantava Hamlets,

So targeted youth support, so referrals go from multi -agency safeguarding team and they provide early interventions for families that have been stepped down from children's social care.

The DASH team, also known as Rapid Response Now, is working in the community, engaging with children in environments, doing some work around mediation, resolving issues before they escalate and engaging with schools and other partner agencies.

So they're out in the community engaging with young people.

And then in terms of adolescent and safeguarding, it's a partnership priority that we've got for 2025 to 2027.

So some of the kind of three areas of that is around piloting multi -agency child protection team,

and then having shared adolescent safeguarding framework for partners and developing multi -agency insight

and integrated learning data set used by all partners to drive collective improvement.

And then this next slide is around the voices of children and families.

I won't read all of them but I guess some of the highlights would be where, so we regularly

ascertain feedback from young people and families and think about how we can kind of improve

our practise and meet their needs.

So a few young people have said that they get to speak to someone without judging and

and they've got someone to talk to and someone that actually sees them.

One of our young people kind of said,

I just wanted to say thank you for everything you do for me without you.

I wouldn't be where I am in my life.

I appreciate everything you've done for me.

And then swiftly moving on, in terms of what's working well,

so good relationship with partner agencies,

robust information intelligence sharing processes in place,

particularly during our daily intelligence meetings,

listening to the voice of children, young people and families, that's evident for our practise.

And during our audit cycles, that's always something that comes up as an area of one of our strengths.

And then we have skilled practitioners that are very passionate and develop trusting and enduring relationships with our young people.

That is one of our strengths, I guess.

In terms of development, so I guess better partnership relationship with adult social care,

Improving the understanding of transitional safeguarding and developing consistent and effective pathways for young adults.

Our 18 to 25 cohort is kind of a concern that although from a social care perspective we don't necessarily always, in terms of our obligations and responsibilities,

it's that cliff edge where a young person turns 18 and then what is on offer between 18 to 25.

So that's something that we need to kind of work on also as part of our partnership priority.

improve our practise on disproportionality and anti -racism. There's a lot of work that we're doing around how we kind of challenge that.

And then I guess the Met Police's review of exploitation cases which I don't know if you'd like to say a little bit about that.

And all partners to remain professionally curious when engaging with children and young people and to challenge and address victim -blaming language.

And then finally I've got to ensure that responses to adolescent safeguarding is incorporated

within our social care reforms.

Thank you, a lovely presentation.

Sorry, I fired for that presentation, because I know you're quite limited with time.

Thank you again for your lovely presentation.

I'm going to, if she moves, and Hassan and Joanna.

Okay, I'm going to go from this side.

So, Ali, do you want to go first, please?

I'm just curious to know, have you guys worked with Lonsar?

London Search and Rescue?

Search and Rescue?

Yes, it's the voluntary service.

Is that in terms of my writing saying that county lines and collecting children from

when they're arrested and bringing them back to where they are.

Just in terms of that's a service I'm aware of that actually does find people.

Yes, so Lonsa and Selfer, they are the search and rescue team and we often use them for

missing people, but what we need to be mindful of is when I'm setting a strategy I might

be stepping into the realms of a criminal investigation here and they're not evidence

based collectors. So what we do with that is a triaging system. We would have our what

we call our police search team, so they're the dedicated search team with the Metropolitan

Police that understand the importance of collecting evidence, searching kind of systematically.

But what they will do is if it doesn't, if we need more support then we will bring them

along in conjunction, it's hand in hand with the police. There might be times when we're

searching an area and it doesn't hit the remit as such or the threshold of our police search

teams then we will go to Lonsa and have those conversations as well but yeah they are part

of a strategy and we do use them in conjunction with our own search teams.

I have one more question. When you say that the people who are interacting with the young

people and children, that they are trauma informed, how frequently, how do you test

this? How do you keep the people up to date in what to expect?

In terms of training and development, we've got a vast number of training opportunities

within the council within the division, so there's loads of opportunities and I guess

It's about having those discussions with members of staff to ensure that they get up to date around practise, how to improve practise.

I think it's something that I would say we do quite well in terms of making sure that we are always improving

and I guess always remaining up to date with what's happening in the community.

I guess there's a lot of changes, a lot of generational changes, things that parents, even us as professionals, are not always aware of.

I think it's really important to make sure that within supervision with staff and ongoing

conversations that we make sure that they remain upskilled throughout their career.

Just a couple of points on that.

Each child that we're working with in the exploitation team is allocated to a social

worker, a professionally recognised body, which is overseen by Social Work England.

And also, as Leo said earlier, we go through an audit process as well where children are

and the quality of the practise and the interventions and the work that's occurring is reviewed by that system and fed back and will then adapt and change what's needed based upon the needs identified.

Thank you.

I was going to ask, thinking about multi -agency coordination, how effective are your partners

working together, sharing information and so on, thinking about police, health, education,

in your services?

Do they actually in a timely manner act and join safeguarding plans?

And do you have any kind of plans to introduce an integrated data dashboard where across

the agencies all they can track the missing child episodes and explosion incidents and

the record in real time?

So I guess a bit about data sets, one of the things I mentioned earlier on was around adolescent

safeguarding being a partnership priority.

So one of the kind of key things that we're looking at is to try and streamline our data

sets because we recognise, and this is I guess a national challenge, that we're not going

that each kind of partner agencies are holding certain data and as part of that partnership priority

we're trying to think about how we can bring that together. So that kind of piece of work has just started

so I'm hoping that with that we'll be able to streamline our data sets and look at how do we drive improving

adolescents safeguarding and what is the kind of accountability and responsibility of different partner agencies.

Just to add on to that, there's a strategic level of data sharing between agencies that

occurs and we do that well.

But operationally when you've got a child that's either missing or there's a concern

around that, the data protection or the data ability to share information, we are able

to ensure that occurs.

So we get fantastic representation across health, education, social care, police, to

to ensure that we have the right professional body that sits around that child to respond

to the need that arises at that point.

So we look at it from both ends of the spectrum, so both operationally, what's going on for

that child at that point, but also the systemic strategic view of what other challenges that

are going on that we need to respond to across the board.

Thank you.

Thank you, Hassan.

I'm going to move over to Joanna.

I have a question to ask as well from the external.

How are the councils managing the increase of online harm for young people?

When I say online harm, it means social media and stuff like that.

It is a big issue.

Would you be able to?

So I think that we recognise that this is a national issue,

one in which the government has responded to by the introduction of the Online Safety Act.

But locally there are a number of responses to it depending on what the level of need or risk is.

So children generally as they are going through childhood will go through some level of process of information sharing with them,

parents being informed about what is online safety, what is the requirements that parents need to have

to ensure that children are safe and protected online, whether that's through their own internet

providers, ensuring they've got the right settings and controls on there to limit information

or limit what access there is available to children, to then children being imparted

that information in schools as well, so they're accessing the right level of information on

the internet through the devices that they're utilising.

But it is recognised, it is a rather unregulated space, one in which we're grappling with,

But if the risks escalate, the escalation processes mirror that alongside the processes within children's social care.

So we're able to sort of link in with early help services or the youth services to work alongside children and young people, depending if that's the level of risk.

Or if the concerns step into sort of like a child protection framework, then my services within family support and protection or the exploitation service will work alongside that child.

and that will come with it having a support worker working alongside the multi -agency professional network

to try and reduce the harms that are occurring.

And as part of the safeguarding partnership a couple of years ago it was a priority, it was one of the priorities that the young

scrutineers identified that they wanted it looked at so that there was a big campaign in terms of working together with the multi -agency

in terms of training, training guides that have been developed as well, so those resources

are there still for professionals to support children with as well.

Joanna, please, your question.

Thank you for the presentation.

I've got a couple of questions.

So how is the data from the pre -MACE and missing episodes being used to predict and prevent

harm?

And I know it's still really early days, but what impact has the local missing hub had

on reducing repeat missing episodes?

And purely for information, I've seen the dog unit.

I was reading that and I was like, I've seen it happen.

So it is happening and it was really fascinating.

So yeah, so thank you.

Shall I ask the question in terms of the data and how pre -mace?

So I guess pre -MACE data kind of, so that data we present at MACE on a monthly basis

for kind of strategic oversight but also our quarterly exploitation and violence and strategic groups.

So that kind of helps us inform practise and what is, and I guess we kind of scrutinise and challenge our data

and kind of within a partnership forum discuss kind of what is the data actually telling us and what do we need to be doing.

So for example, one of the kind of, something that we kind of notice is child sexual exploitation

and that doesn't seem to be within the kind of risk assessments.

It seems to be that there are probably more children that we could be identifying that are being sexually abused,

but at the moment it seems it's more prominent that criminal exploitation and serious issue findings come into our attention.

And I think one of the reasons which I think Conrad will probably relate to this is with criminal exploitation,

children get arrested for being in possession of drugs or being in possession of weapons

or being stabbed or, yeah. So those kind of incidents come to our attention and it's quite

obvious because there's an incident and then we get notified about it. Sexual exploitation

can be a little bit different to kind of identify because it's, the indicators may be there

or may not be there but it's quite subtle so it's drip drip drip. So sometimes I guess

one of the things that we are looking at and having further discussions and

challenging is around how can we identify children that are either at risk

or being sexually exploited so those are the kind of stuff that we kind of

on a strategic level have discussions within our partners and I guess

scrutinise data in that respect.

And you look at the themes from return home conversations as well to see if

any themes to help in terms of how to intervene as well?

In terms of the response to missing, for me, we spoke to Tel Hamlitz and Hackney, it's

too early, we're only ten weeks into this, but from phase one moving across, the general

kind of impression is we're identifying and locating children and missing people faster

really because we haven't got that truncated system where two or three people are looking

at it pending on the risk we've got. It comes into one place, they own it, they lead on

it and they respond to it really. And I think that's key and kind of post that what we do

have is if I may is you've got the missing investigation that navigates and you've got

those officers leading on that but what they need to be aware of are the potential exploitation

opportunities that present themselves going through there.

And I think that's what was missed before.

Perfect example is a young person will get a phone call through their phone data, whilst missing, from a prison.

That would have been ignored and we would have just been focusing on finding that person.

But now there's that process where that will be passed to my exploitation team

and they will look to target and understand and get more granular detail on that phone call

and understand that risk whilst my missing team

concentrating on what they should be doing as well.

And in this term, they will be part of the strategy conversations

with Gercel and the exploitation team and the social worker

to understand, well, where's that information come from?

Is there a footprint of that person within the child's network?

If not, how do we respond to that as well?

And we've also, if I may, a missing person coordinator.

I think this is key, this is around what the Met are doing.

Prior to the implementation and the Casey Report, we had missing coordinators.

There was one police officer that straddled a number of BCUs and they were trying to work

with partners, whether it be NHS, care homes, to try and remind them of their obligations

in response and managing missing reports, or those that potentially are going missing.

And what we do have now, we have a detective sergeant and an officer that's dedicated to

this borough and Hackney as well.

Their role is to review that data, understand as Gercel mentioned, those five or six children

are going missing.

What does that look like?

Why are they going missing?

And work with a care home in terms of the response, listen to the voice of the child

as well.

And I know I'm drifting off to adult here, but there's the reason in terms of the NHS.

What are their obligations if somebody goes mission under section 17 leave?

Rather than reporting it to us first, there are certain things under Op Affinity, Op Resolute,

that there's a national agreement across the NHS and police that they've signed up for,

so they need to do some work around that first.

And perhaps pushing back on partners, because what that means is we can concentrate on those missing children

that truly are missing, not a report from potentially an adult who's at home and the

NHS hasn't been around there and really serviced their obligations prior to reporting

the missing. I think that's key and that's what that MPC coordinator does. It's above

that and holds, including us, holds us to account and reminds us, but in a professional

way and a kind of collaborative way and I think that's important.

Thank you guys. I have a couple of questions. I was just thinking about Dr. Rice when I was looking at his data.

He loved the data questions. So my first question is looking at your data for the return home and your data for missing persons

and it's obviously significantly missing from care is like triple.

And I'm sure you're working on why that is, as you mentioned earlier.

My first question is why the return to home such low numbers, below 50s?

I mean obviously in quarter two it's up to a little bit, but still for missing, for care

leaders it's 44%.

That's my first question.

My second question is regarding your county lines.

We have a serious drug problem within the borough.

As you know, laughing gas, now this new drug called lean is quite prevalent with the care

leavers and whatnot.

So what are you doing to mitigate those things and how are you working with the local authority

as well as the supportive accommodation housing?

I like that you talked about prevention.

And I want to go into prevention about talking about primary school awareness.

What about secondary school awareness?

And also bleed kits.

It's brilliant installing 23 bleed kits across the borough.

First of all, I live in the borough.

I've been living for 18 years now.

Where are they?

And also, how did you expect them to just, who is going to be using those bleed kits?

Are they trained to use them?

And why are we not doing anything to stop the bleeding in the first place?

Why are we putting it after measures?

That's it.

So to qualify the issue around missing and then return home conversation.

So any child that goes missing are offered a return home conversation.

And I think the data as of this morning, I think that 99 % of children have been offered a return home conversation.

What you're questioning is around the acceptance rate.

So 100 % or close to 100 % return home conversations are offered

and then just under half are then taken up.

There are a variety of reasons for that which sort of go from potentially a child going remissing.

So if you think about those children that are in that top five children cohort, that's an issue that occurs there.

take up great acceptance by the young person of wanting to have that because

what we do know as well is that a high proportion of our children that go

missing go missing frequently and therefore are offered conversations

frequently and therefore we get feedback from them which is not on the lines of

the what is the purpose of that and what does it inform us of so we're sort of

doing some work alongside our the children that do go missing to

understand what would fit and what would work better for them in that instance.

So that's why we're aware of it.

We also review alongside other local authorities their data as well to understand how and what

they report upon.

So we're looking at how we're reporting as well because we currently report what we feel

is a true measure of offers and acceptance, but we're looking at how can that be, how

can that potentially be reported in future.

You asked a question around county lines and drug issues and that I think what we will

do is when we're working with a child where there's concerns around drug misuse there's

a whole professional network that works around that child and in those instances we'll refer

those children to the appropriate mechanisms so drug and alcohol services for children,

and that is to ensure that children are not being treated with the same type of support

and that is to ensure that children are not being treated with the same type of support.

So we will link children in to ensure that they get the support they require to reduce

that issue.

What was the third question?

Prevention.

So it was regarding prevention in primary school and secondary school and also the bleed kits.

So we have sort of a way in which children's social care generally responds to harm

around graduated reproach around the level of need. So schools in themselves will offer and deliver

support and training to children and staff and parents around risks and concerns around exploitation.

and up until this year we've been running a programme of support by a commission service

to awareness raise around the concerns around child sexual exploitation or child criminal

exploitation. That work is now being taken over by education colleagues to be delivered.

And then if any concerns or any emerging issues or risks are identified and reported into

about multi -agency safeguarding team at the front door of children's social care.

Concerns are then, depending on the level of need, are shared between early help and

the youth service or children's social care to undertake an assessment to bring that multi -agency

response to that. So prevention is absolutely key to all of that and we'll try and reduce

harm where possible and ensure children are safe in the community.

So we can get back to you about more of the prevention in terms of where the bleed kits are actually there.

My understanding is that there has been training for young people around using the bleed kits.

So I know that previously the detached team worked with a voluntary organisation, I believe it is, in terms of supporting there.

just thinking about prevention in terms of the expansion of the youth service, we've

got a safe space within every ward as well, the detached youth, the targeted youth support

as well, who are supporting on a graduated level different cohorts of children.

I'm loud anyway. So a few things, in terms of the drugs, we see a lot of that in the

So Lean you said is new, it's actually not new.

So I've been working in a hospital from when the service began for six years.

So in terms of Lean we see that nearly on a daily basis.

Nitrous oxide, we're the only hospital that has a nitrous oxide pathway,

and that's for children and adults,

where children and adults attend three times a week to receive treatment as a result of nitrous oxide.

And similar to what they said, they would be referred to Compass Safe East,

which is a youth drug support in a system similar in a hospital we've got reset.

But we do some of that work as well with some of my caseworkers.

In terms of the primary schools, I do the teaching and primary schools to parents.

We do it in secondary schools as well but primary schools specifically because it goes to prevention.

So we tend to do it with year five to year sixes because it's the transition period

inter -secondary school. So a lot of that is around risk management, seeing risk,

understanding risk, what to do if something happens and also similar to

what the chair said prior around social media, training parents on apps, what to

look for, when children are going live, what is in the background, what is

actually happening. Tower Hamlets is one of the first to do financial exploitation

and training, so we're again going back to the social media element of that. So that's

some of the stuff that we're doing.

Sorry, just going back to the bleed kit, I know you said you were going to get back to

me, just to offer, like street doctors, they offer great training for it and I've accessed

that for my services. They charge about a grand though.

So I believe, I don't have current data, but I do know that in the last two years street

doctors have done some training with young tower hamlets and with the detached youth

team.

If I may, just to add briefly on to around question one and two really. The return home

interviews as well, we're mindful as a police force as well and I think it's important from

our missing team that if a child's been away for 10 days or so or any limit of

time we truly don't know what they've been exposed to and if they get home at

two o 'clock in the morning we will go around and see them as a uniformed

officer and I'm mindful of the distrust from the police and again that gingerly

approach in terms of we don't know what they're exposed to, not been perhaps fed,

hydrated or slept properly and then a uniform cop is rocked up there at two

o 'clock in the morning, they don't want to speak to us. But it might be the fact is then

we look at this and we go round from an exploitation point of view in the morning. Once we get

that debrief or the result of that conversation, that goes on to our systems and it gets shared

with partners as well. And it might be the fact is they'll offer that, but again the

feedback we get from young children is we need to be mindful of the number of approaches

from professionals as well. And that's key and that's why the collaborative working works

because we share that almost immediately and then that risk assessment is taken place by

partners. The county lines element too, and I think that's key from an enforcement point

of view, from the exploitation team we were very much the extended version of social care

or the exploitation team in partners and that's not what we should be. We're there to support

in a collaborative function but ultimately we're there to enforce and I think that's

the key point of it is when they go missing or there's concern from Gersel and her team,

we have that strategy meeting. If there is signs of exploitation and there is potentially

a route to identify those perpetrators, then we will pick it up as a... so you've got the

prevention and the education but also you've got to have the enforcement as well. And I

think that's key is recognising the two parts. And we've got a new leading responsible officer

officer who's put key performance indicators in the set and I think that's important because

three or four years ago when the exploitation team from the NPS was set up there was no real clear

guidance of what they were doing and they would be navigating their way through the system

in conjunction and support with social care and partners but ultimately we're an enforcement

outfit that does safeguarding and prevention as well and I think that's key is county lines we

would then target and enforce accordingly.

And they're the tactics that come, apologies,

they're the tactics that come in the outside

of any disclosure from the child, and that's key.

It's very much, well, the child may,

for a number of reasons, don't wanna tell us,

but it's for us to look at the data,

use our tactics accordingly,

and if it has to be a Kalese Hill kind of tactic

and remove potentially someone on recall,

no insurance, weapons, anything, just get them out of the way.

And I think that's important.

Thank you.

I'm going to go on online.

Ashaf, are you there?

Do you want to ask any questions?

Dr Philip, are you there?

Yes, I'm here, Chair.

um the the the pre i'm looking at the pre -may data and and the that's the month and the the

the analysis um i i just wonder if you can put a little bit more around if the the police can uh

say something about the gang affiliation i i i thought it was x would be expecting that i suppose

to be right up there and I suppose it is but I wonder how you see the county lines and

the gang affiliation, how distinct are they? This is just explaining how you define the

roles. Thank you.

I guess just in terms of gang affiliation, for Tower Hamlets when we locally look at

our community and our young people, it's not necessarily that we've got a gang issue.

And I think when we kind of look at the definition of gangs, what we see in Tower Hamlets, what

we see in Hackney is not necessarily what we see in Tower Hamlets.

We've got groups of young people, whether we want to call it co -offending or I guess

groups of young people kind of hanging around together, either carrying weapons or being

in possession of drugs and they're not necessarily defined as a gang. So I guess in terms of

our language and terminology that we use, and this is something that we kind of work

with practitioners on an ongoing basis, we need to be very mindful that when we are talking

about children that we're not saying they've been a gang when in actual fact they're not

in a gang, they're just a group of children that are just gravitating towards each other,

hanging around in particular areas may or may not involve criminality but most certainly are being harmed one way or another or are at risk.

So I guess the media doesn't necessarily help this because we talk about gangs.

So I guess when we think about Tower Hamlets that's actually not the picture necessarily within Tower Hamlets.

yes, serious youth violence, most definitely criminal exploitation, but gang affiliation is not a kind of pressing concern.

Or certainly we shouldn't be labelling young people as being part of a gang. I hope that's answered the question.

And I think from a policeman's perspective, we've fallen foul for this previously, where we're very easy and quick to label young people and children being in a gang,

without any Providence and I think that's the key element to it as well for example I may be

Known associate in a no affiliate with a gang and I happen to have a coffee with Gerstle and that's been seen by the police

An intelligence report will go on to say

Gerstle's in the gang the same as Conrad and that is poor policing

For me and we recognise that because we had the gangs matrix and Gerstle would then be part of my gang simply by

association, she will be targeted as well and she'll be swept up in that kind of law

enforcement prevention piece really when ultimately she just added a coffee with me. So I think

we're wise to this and more educated and smarter in terms of that and we've got rid of the

gangs matrix because that was messy and it diluted police's response on the streets too

and say for neighbourhoods in terms of those children, that person was seen with comrade,

she's in a gang. No, no she's not. She's just been seen with Conrad and I think that's key.

The providence and the source of where that comes from is massive really.

And that's where that distrust comes from as well.

The stop and search. Gersal's part of a gang so we're going to stop and search her.

There weren't grounds there but we have to have that grounds for Section 1.

Stop, search, your paces. And that little bit of intelligence feeds into the concerns that we have around the NPS

in terms of that community distrust. Only a little intelligence report but we lose the

faith of Gersel and when she goes missing and the officer rocks up at two o 'clock in

the morning in uniform all they're picturing is that Dero used the word manhandling of

that person on the street because by known association she's getting searched.

I'm coming in, you should do.

Ashraf, do you want to come along?

Hi, so can I just say very quickly, I'm really impressed with the work that's going on, to

be honest, it's quite robust.

A lot of good data around here and just generally, thank you for the hard work.

I wanted to kind of draw your attention to the skilled practitioners which you have stated on the site was working well.

And you've mentioned obviously the skilled work, the practitioners are kind of developing and enduring these trusted kind of relationships with children and young people.

Now, a couple of things around skilled practitioners.

One is what is that kind of workforce like at the moment?

What's the staff morale?

What kind of, how experienced are these workers and what's the kind of retention rate?

But ultimately, a lot of these work is being handled, a lot of these cases being handled

by these skilled practitioners.

It will be interesting to know the level of skill and the qualification for such a role.

And as a wider point, how experienced and how well are they being kept and looked after?

And is there a good retention rate with these practitioners?

Thank you.

I'm happy to answer that.

So I guess in terms of, we've got varied practitioners with varied experiences.

Most of them I would say have been doing this kind of job of working, engaging with young people for a number of years, vast kind of experiences in different settings.

I guess for me it's really important that, for example, if I'm interviewing a support worker, one of the things that of course I look at experience and what they've done,

but throughout my conversations with them, throughout the interview, I would love to see the passion and the interest in working with young people

and that's really, really important because not everyone has the necessary skills and the interest to do so.

So I think if you have the passion and the interest and the dedication to actually commit and have patience to engage with young people

and work through them throughout the ups and downs, then I think in terms of the skills and the experience,

I think as I said previously as a council we've got a lot of opportunities around training

and how we can further develop practitioners.

In terms of the morale, I would say that it's very good.

They do of course have to engage with the young people that, you know, they've experienced trauma

and that might be historical, that might be current and some of these children are in custody.

they get, there's kind of a number of issues within their family home so they have to I guess absorb a lot of that kind of

the emotional kind of aspect and the trauma and stuff so they have regular supervision and will make sure that we kind of look after our staff

and that they are being well supported because it is quite heavy in terms of the kind of situations and young children that they have to engage with

So I would say that MoiAo is very good and in terms of staff retention, I say it's good.

We don't really have, I was on maternity leave for about a year, when I came back I think there was only one support worker that had kind of moved on and left the organisation.

So I've known a lot of them for a number of years.

Thank you.

Shiblu, can I take your last question please on this?

Thank you guys. I think the officer kind of you talked about a little bit about the prejudices of associating other people because you're having a coffee, right?

So at the moment obviously you might have heard on the news there's a lot of things about the police being racist and prejudiced and obviously Taohama being quite diverse.

How are you stopping those prejudices? You mentioned there are prejudices, how are you stopping those prejudices?

For me as one of perhaps 35 ,000 officers at my level, I'll probably start from a corporate response really more than anything else.

There's been a lot of training and a lot of recognition that even the conscious bias that comes with outside of racism,

but the response to violence against women and girls, the homo...sorry?

Yeah, so the homophobic element that comes with it is ultimately that the NPS recognises that has a lot of work to be done.

outside of education is very easy but what the MPS are doing is making it

clear that you need to be an upstander not a bystander. I mean I've been in the

police 23 years and probably 10 years ago I was perhaps a bystander and

accepting knowing it was wrong but not having the confidence to challenge

because there wasn't those processes in place to one support me but the

robustly deal with that officer that's made those comments as well so I think

from a chair and panel's point of view, you've seen on the news, Mr Ralley has made it clear

those officers from that BBC One panel drama, within two weeks they've been sacked. And

I think that's positive because one, we don't want those people in the organisation, but

two, it shows the robustness and the procedures and I think that's key. Forget about what

I would like, it's the procedures that allow that to happen. So there's a lot of avenues

out to report wrongdoing, whether that's racism or otherwise. I'm not on the

streets so it's very difficult but from my team and what I manage it's always

understanding the importance of challenging but making sure the seniors

support you and having that environment where one we know it's wrong, we know

it's wrong but there are people that will ignore that and perhaps have the

mindset that it's not but two having the workforce and peers around to challenge

three, having a network of support and four, having the organisation respond properly to that.

And I think that's what's been lacking.

And probably in the last five years, we've turned that around a little bit in terms of our processes,

but we're still weeding bad cops.

We're always going to have it in 30 ,000 or 40 ,000, we are still weeding bad cops out of the organisation.

Thank you. Just quickly, talking about gangs, do you still get post -God wars that are happening?

I know when I was younger a lot of postcode was happening in the Hamlets.

I know you said there's no such gangs anymore, whatever, but I'm sure there is.

A bit.

I mean these children, they live in, they live in, I mean they live in Taber Hamlets,

they are children that go to schools, they are known between each other, they live in an area,

there is a postcode associated to where they live and they generally congregate with people that they are from the same area.

Would I call it a postcode war? No, not necessarily, but they are inherently our children that live within Tawahamlet, who are associated to an area within it.

Absolutely, and I think that there's two elements to this. We need to be mindful of, firstly our approach to young children,

but recognising if we don't get that right, then in our network we call them alphas and they start, then the exploiter becomes the exploited.

And I'm not going to fool the panel here and say we haven't got a gangs problem.

Ultimately we have those elders that still run that network and we have specialist crime

officers that respond to that as well.

But yeah ultimately we do have it.

Mark Rowley, Mr Rowley might be.

But we have a problem with gangs and it's always going to have that element of certain

gangs in certain areas absolutely.

I think that postcode is probably five or six years old, but ultimately the area, whether

that covers that postcode, will have an affiliated gang without a doubt and it's just recognising

where the transition of that young person sits in all of that and making sure they don't

become an exploiter and subsequently an elder, goes into prison and that cycle starts happening.

I think also working in this sector we try to make sense of something that's so complex.

So what we deal with this week we could say the Royal London gang versus the Tower Hamlets Council gang.

Tomorrow that could split up to five different sections.

So I think it's difficult to say postcodes or gangs because in our relationship I have three people coming stabbed.

that one could be from Hackney but you've got an issue with someone in Tawa Amlit and

then you could have the person who stabbed both of them in the third bay. So it's much

Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee - Tuesday 18 November 2025, 6:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-CommitteeTuesday, 18th November 2025 at 6:30pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Leave a comment on the quality of this webcast

Votes

Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee
Tuesday, 18th November 2025 at 6:30pm