Disruption Meetings Procedure for Fostering and Residential Placements

In circumstances where there is concern for the stability of a long term home of a child, this should be identified and addressed at an early stage by the relevant professionals with a My Life, My Home Meeting convened to appraise the issues undermining the stability of the child's home and put in place actions to maintain the accommodation (See Placement Planning and Disruption Meetings Procedure).

A Disruption Meeting must be convened for a child whose long term fostering home or residential home ends abruptly or on an unplanned basis. This should be informed by the long term My Plan for the child that should be up to date, on the child's file and underpinned by care planning process as agreed through Court, Local Authority care planning meetings and ratified through the Our Children's Review by the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO). For children in long term accommodation since 2013, a long term match should have entailed an assessment by the child's Social Worker and the Fostering Social Worker as ratified through the Fostering Panel. This process may not have taken place for children placed before that date.

A Disruption Meeting should focus on the needs of the child and help the child and carers to move on while also informing future planning, particularly with a view to securing permanency for the child by preventing any future breakdowns. If a Disruption Meeting is not requested and does not take place following the breakdown of their home, the Team Manager from the Social Work Team must record the reasons this is not required on the child's record. IROs should also consider the need for a Disruption Meeting via the Our Children's Review process and make recommendations for this meeting to take place or record the reasons this is not required.

For children whose pre adoptive placements disrupts, a Disruption Meeting should take place. Please refer to Disruption of Adoptive Placements Procedure.

The need to hold a Disruption Meeting must not delay putting in place alternative arrangements for meeting a child's needs and any immediate action required to remedy any problems arising from a disruption, e.g. support for the new home and addressing health and education needs.

A Disruption Meeting should be organised within 4 weeks of the home arrangement ending and should take place within 5 and 10 weeks after the placement has ended as per CoramBAAF (Coram British Association of Adoption and Fostering) guidance.

The purpose of a Disruption Meeting is to focus on the best interests of children as previously placed or for future home arrangements by:

• Identifying significant factors leading to the disruption;
• Enabling participants to share feelings and information about the home arrangement and disruption;
• Garnering information about the child to inform future care planning with a view to enhancing future stability of the child's home;
• Considering the quality of the preparation and support offered to carers, family and child;
• Reviewing data from disruption meetings to inform future care planning for Our Children across Children's Social Care.

The responsibility for identifying cases where a Disruption meeting should be held rests with one, or more, of the following:

• The Child's Social Worker / Team Manager from the Team in which the child is allocated in all cases;
• Fostering Social Worker / Team Manager (for all Local Authority fostering homes);
• Fostering Social Worker from the Independent Fostering Agency (if an independent provider home);
• Residential Team Manager, Local Authority and independent provider, for all residential homes;
• Child's Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) in all cases;
• Senior / Service Manager from within Children's Social Care and Safeguarding, Quality and Review Service in all cases.

Children should then be referred through to the Corporate Independent Reviewing Officer with the organisation and chairing of Disruption Meetings is the responsibility of the Safeguarding, Quality and Review Service.

The meeting will be chaired by the Corporate Independent Reviewing Officer; or nominated deputy within the Service in their absence. SQR admin will then e-mail those professionals identified above to confirm attendees/venue/date. The Child's Social Worker Team Manager will arrange a minute taker; preferably someone from the Admin Team in the Permanence Team.

The meetings should include participation and attendance at the meeting (bold italics) from the following:

Disruption Meetings provide an opportunity to explore and understand the reasons for a placement breakdown and provide actions to improve future home of the child and secure better longer term planning.

The areas to be covered in the meeting, and template for the meeting minutes, are as follows:

Once the Chair has added the Introduction and Summary and checked the minutes they will distribute to all those who were invited to the meeting. Minutes must be sent out with the caveat that any omissions, factual inaccuracies or misrepresentation of individual / agency reviews should be reported to the chair within 7 working days of receipt.

Minutes must always be taken with a copy recorded on the child's file and, if relevant, the foster carer's file and sent to participants of the meeting and the following:

• Service Manager Safeguarding, Quality and Review (Our Children);
• Service Manager for Fostering/Adoption (Our Children);
• Service Manager for the relevant Social Work Team;
• Commissioning Manager where the placement is independent provider.

The Corporate IRO must keep a record of all disruptions including statistics of the numbers of disruptions and meetings held.

If there are significant concerns relating to the breakdown of the child's home the following should take place:

1. For Local Authority foster homes, consideration should always be given to an urgent Fostering Review, by the Corporate IRO, with a recommendation for presentation to the Fostering Panel;
2. For Local Authority residential homes, minutes of the disruption meetings should be made available to the Regulation 44 Visitor;
3. For independent providers – fostering and residential - minutes and actions of the disruption meetings should be overseen by the Commissioning Manager with a view to the feasibility of future placements.

An annual audit of disrupted placements (where a Placement Disruption Meeting has been held) should be undertaken by the Corporate IRO and will be included in the Annual Report for the IRO Service that will be in the public domain via the Blackpool Council website.

Quarterly reports will be provided to the Children's Management Meeting by the Service Manager responsible for the Corporate IRO. This will include the following:

• Number of long term placements ended with a record of the Disruption Meetings taking place;
• Number of the Disruption Meetings not taking place and the reasons not convened;
• Participation and attendance of personnel – see Section 4, Participation in Disruption Meetings;
• Key themes emerging to include the use of Placement Support Meetings

In turn these reports will contribute to the Quality Service Framework across Children's Social Care to instigate in-depth audits on highlighted cases.