(Members Code of Conduct – Part 4A of the Constitution)

To receive disclosures of interests from members and co-opted members on matters to be considered at the meeting. The disclosure must include the nature of the interest.

An interest must also be disclosed in the meeting when it becomes apparent to the member during the meeting.

Notes:

(1)      Members must consider their interests, and act according to the following:

(2)      Disclosable pecuniary interests relate to the Member concerned or their spouse/partner.

(3)      Members in arrears of Council Tax by more than two months must not vote in decisions on, or which might affect, budget calculations, and must disclose at the meeting that this restriction applies to them.  A failure to comply with these requirements is a criminal offence under section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992. 

(4)      Officers must disclose interests in accordance with Council Standing Order 44.

No disclosures were received.

(Access to Information Procedure Rules – Part 3B of the Constitution)

Reports and background papers for agenda items may be inspected by contacting the person shown after each agenda item.  Certain reports and background papers may be restricted. 

Any request to remove the restriction on a report or background paper should be made to the relevant Strategic Director or Assistant Director whose name is shown on the front page of the report. 

If that request is refused, there is a right of appeal to this meeting. 

Please contact the officer shown below in advance of the meeting if you wish to appeal. 

(Su Booth – 07814 073884)

No requests were received to inspect reports and background papers.

Item 1        Introduction and welcome by Young Person

1.     Emily Rhodes welcomed participants to the meeting, which would focus on contact time.  Discussion of contact time could sometimes be intense, so she asked children and young people to look out for each other and to approach her, Helen Cliffe or Amandip Johal if anyone became distressed.

Item 2    Feedback regarding outstanding actions

Entitlements – Heidi Thomas Service Manager Care Leavers Service

3.     Emily Rhodes said that a paper on entitlements was ready to be presented to the Council Executive Committee.  She introduced Heidi Thomas from the Leaving Care Service, who would explain how Coram Voice was being used to make information about entitlements more user-friendly.

4.     Heidi Thomas showed a slide that set out the Financial Offer for different categories of children and young people.  The categories (Eligible, Relevant, Former Relevant etc) were not easy for most people to interpret, so the information had been embedded in Coram Voice, which would take young people through it in a more user-friendly way.  Attempts to demonstrate the link to the information were unsuccessful but she assured young people that the link was easy to find and use.  Emily Rhodes said she would e-mail the link to children and young people.

Action: Emily Rhodes

5.     Heidi Thomas said she would make sure that the link was easier for other children and young people to find.

Action: Heidi Thomas

6.     Heidi Thomas explained that the Coram Voice link took users through a series of questions and then showed which category they belonged to for the purposes of the Financial Offer (eg Eligible, Relevant, Former Relevant etc), so that they could look up the entitlements for their category in the Financial Offer document.

7.     Asked what a young person should do if they went through this process and found that they were not receiving everything to which they were entitled, Heidi Thomas said that they should raise it with their social worker, IRO or carer so that their pathway planning could be reviewed.

8.     Young people said that the process of finding this information needed to be more straightforward.  It seemed that the system, once they had the link and had answered the questions, would only tell them whether they were Eligible, Relevant, Former Relevant, etc – they would then have to find the Financial Offer to look up the entitlement for members of that category.   This was over-complicated: the system needed to show their entitlements directly, without them having to move back and forth between different documents.

9.     Young people asked how the information on entitlements would be made available to young people who did not have access to the internet.  Heidi Thomas said that they would all have personal advisers, who would make sure that they had the information they needed.

10.  Amandip Johal informed children and young people that all websites were being transferred from the Council to the new Children and Families Trust.  Her team was looking  ...  view the full minutes text for item 48.