How covid is impacting on care hearings in Northumberland

A county council report on children’s services’ performance during legal proceedings in 2020-21 concluded that some children have experienced delay as a result of Covid 19 restrictions, but that the impact ‘is very similar to that experienced regionally and nationally’.

The problems were exacerbated by the fact that the restrictions came into force ‘at a time when Northumberland had higher than usual cases in care proceedings and the court was already experiencing challenges around capacity and timescales’.

Addressing the Thursday, December 3, meeting of the authority’s family and children’s services committee, Graham Reiter, the service director for children’s social care, said: “There have been quite significant delays for the court being able to progress cases with children going through the system and there were some challenges with the process for court hearings.”

Hybrid hearings were later introduced to enable some face-to-face contact between judges and families, but setting those up ‘were, and continue to be, a challenge’.

Mr Reiter added: “Given the higher number of children in care proceedings at the moment, there do remain some subject to delay.

“This is reflected in our overall number of children in care, which is higher than it has been. They’ve plateaued at around 445, which is significantly higher than it has been, but we are starting to see some movement in the court arena.”

The report revealed that there are currently 202 Northumberland children subject to public law proceedings, compared to around 120 to 130 during the first six months of 2019, however, from the middle of last year, they began to increase to in excess of 200 – the point reached in March 2020, just as the first national lockdown began.

It added: ‘This pattern meant that Northumberland went into lockdown with a high number of cases already before the court, many of them at the point where final hearings to secure the long-term plans were imminent.

‘Many of these cases have been able to conclude; between March and September 2020, 102 children have had their final care plan agreed by the court. This is actually more than during the same period in 2019 when only 67 cases were finalised.’

The report also notes that 90.5% of Northumberland cases had at least one hearing during the lockdown restrictions which is in line with regional and national comparators.

In response to a question from the committee, it was clarified that the delays are affecting children in temporary provision from moving into more permanent arrangements and not any who are at risk of harm.

The meeting also heard that social workers have been continuing to have face-to-face meetings with families throughout the pandemic and the council’s executive director of children’s services, Cath McEvoy-Carr, thanked staff for all their efforts this year.

The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers and consequently the advertising that we receive. We are now more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news by buying a copy of our newspaper. If you can, please do pick up a copy when you are at the shops. Thank you for your support.