Government criticised by Northumberland council officers over 26 week target for childcare court cases

The Govrnment’s Public Law Outline target for cases, which are where a local authority applies for a court order to safeguard the welfare of a child, aims to have cases completed in 26 weeks.

However, in Northumberland that figure stands at 39.7 weeks for 2022, while the national average for the same period is 43 weeks.

This is despite the fact that Northumberland’s children’s services department was praised in a recent inspection by Ofsted.

Speaking at Thursday’s meeting of the county council’s family and children’s services overview and scrutiny committee, Catholic church representative Alan Hodgson questioned the issue.

He said: “Is 26 just an arbitrary figure?

"Do we need to go back to the Government and say, unless you’re going to increase capacity in the courts, you have insisted on something that is not achievable?”

Director of children’s services Graham Reiter explained that there had been national feedback from local authorities up and down the country that the 26-week target was ‘aspirational’ and that no other court had achieved the target.

He added: “We’re not an outlier at all.”

Ofsted’s inspection, published in August 2022, highlighted that social workers identified permanence plans for children “at the earliest opportunity”.

Pointing to this praise, Mr Hodgson continued: “As far as Ofsted is concerned, you’re doing everything you can. Who is monitoring the courts?

“That’s left to the Ministry of Justice? They’re marking their own homework.”

Mr Reiter confirmed that this was the case.

Coun Wayne Daley added that there was a need for the work that went into the cases to be thorough.

He said: “We have to make sure that every conceivable option is considered.”

The report presented to county council members stated that there are currently 108 Northumberland children subject to public law proceedings; the vast majority of those children originate from the south east and central areas of the county. This is a decrease from the first half of 2021, where there between 170 and 180.