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Services for Children and Young People
Freedom of information requests and answers
This page contains the requests made to Services for Children and Young People for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) during 2010. The requests concern the business and services provided by Services for Children and Young People to the public and schools. For the business and services provided by local authority schools, please contact the school direct: for the purpose of the Freedom of Information requests, schools are a separate public body to the local authority and they are not obliged to provide information to us. Schools may be contacted individually; contact details can be obtained from the Plymouth Schools Directory page.
The information supplied on this page continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You can use the information for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse such as commercial publication would require the permission of the Council. All rights are reserved.
Details on how to make a freedom of information request can be found on the general information requests page.
The requests are listed by subject:
- Children's social care
- Education welfare: absence, exclusions,elected home education
- Finance
- Safeguarding
- School curriculum
- School organisation: pupil numbers, building and grounds
- Staffing and Human Resources
Request number: 762648
Date request received: 4 January 2010
Date response issued: 1 March 2010
Information requested - child protection and adoption:
- As of 1 January 2010, how child protection cases were unallocated? (An unallocated case is one in which there is no named qualified consistent social worker visiting a child regularly, following a purposeful plan overseen by a line manager.)
- How many children in your authority have been classified as having adoption in their best interest but have yet to be adopted?
- How many of them have been waiting for longer than 3 years?
- How does your children’s services department pass lists of children with child protection plans to local hospitals? (for example by email, by letter), how often is this done? To which hospitals are the lists sent?
- If your children’s services have been assessed by OfSTED under the Common Area Assessment, approximately how much did it cost your authority to prepare for that inspection?
Information supplied:
- No child protection cases were unallocated.
- There are 32 children who have had their plan agreed at panel but have not yet been placed with their adoptive families. There are 31 children who have been placed for adoption and are currently waiting for their adoption order.
- At the time of writing, 2 children have been waiting for 3 years for their adoption to be submitted.
- All agencies maintain their own independent databases and management information systems for children subject to protection plans. However, for the purposes of accuracy the Local Authority posts all registrations and amendments of children with a child protection plan to the Directorate Manager Accident and Emergency at Derriford Hospital. This is due to change when a secure address has been setup so the information can be sent electronically.
- Whilst we are about to have an announced inspection, we do not separately capture the authority’s preparation costs.
Request number: 763063
Date request received: 15 January 2010
Date response issued: 15 February 2010
Information requested - adoption:
- The number of children that were placed for adoption in your local authority this year (2009).
- The number of disrupted adoptions and adoption breakdowns, and therefore the number of children who were passed back from adoptive families into council care in the same year.
Information supplied:
- In 2009 there were 27 children placed for adoption.
- Out of the 27 children none of them have been disrupted.
Request number: 764517
Date request received: 1 February2010
Date response issued: 12 February 2010
Information requested: on which years has the Plymouth local authorities, namely the social services children's department have had zero rating by the inspectorate
Information supplied: The Council considers that the information you have requested is subject to the exemption contained in Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2005: this information is already accessible to you as the relevant inspection reports are in the public domain. Please see the following Unique Resource Location which will take you to the Plymouth City Council’s inspection reports on the website for OfSTED, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxcare_providers/la_view/(leaid)/879.
Request number: 763843
Date request received: 25 January 2010
Date response issued: 15 February 2010
Information requested - home education: During 2009, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) claimed that two related campaigns were being conducted: 1. A campaign to vilify Graham Badman, author of a report into home education. 2. A campaign to inundate the DCSF with Freedom of Information requests. Recent comments by a senior official in the DCSF suggested that these alleged campaigns might have spread to include local authorities. I would like you to provide me with the following information:
- First, please confirm whether or not you have observed these alleged campaigns.
- Second, please confirm whether or not you have exchanged any correspondence with the DCSF regarding these alleged campaigns.
- Finally, if you have exchanged correspondence with the DCSF on this issue then please provide me with copies of that correspondence.
Information supplied:
In response to your questions the Council has not observed these alleged campaigns and holds no relevant recorded information.
Request number: 765491
Date request received: 15 February 2010
Date response issued: 23 February 2010
Information requested:
- How many education welfare officers does the loal authority employ to support school children in your area.
- How many educational psychologists does the local authority employ to support school children in your area.
- How many children of compulsory school age are there in your local authority area.
Information supplied:
- 2 managers, 9 full time Education Welfare Officers, 3 part time Education Welfare Officers, 2 seconded Education Welfare Officers, 1 seconded family support worker.
- In total 17.two full time equivalent educational psychologists, 11.9 full time equivalents who work for the Educational Psychology Service, the rest work for other related community based services.
- 33, 415 based on the Office for National Statistics 2008 mid year estimate.
Request number: 765958
Date request received: 22 February 2010
Date response issued: 16 March 2010
Information requested: the numbers of pupils who have been permanently excluded or made the subject of a fixed term exclusion. Where possible I would also like to know the ages of the pupil involved, and their gender. I would also like to know what action was taken in each case.
Information supplied:
Plymouth Primary Schools fixed term and permanent exclusions 1 September 2007 to 31 January 2010 [7.03KB]
Plymouth Primary Schools fixed term exclusions by year group 1 September 2007 to 31 January 2010 [7.63KB]
Unfortunately we are unable to provide information on what action was taken in each case.
Request number: 764264
Date request received: 22 January 2010
Date response issued: 16 February 2010
Information requested: the number of children who have left Widey Court Primary School term by term over the last two years (from January 2008 to December 2008).
Information supplied:
Widey Court Primary School leavers October 2007 to January 2010 [10.01KB]
Request number: 764511
Date request received: 3 February 2010
Date response issued: 16 March 2010
Information requested - security measures at schools:
- How many schools in your area have installed metal detectors? (Please give a number).
- How many schools in your area have installed panic buttons? (Please give a number).
- Over the 2008/9 academic year, how many incidents were there where schools confiscated offensive weapons from pupils? (Please give a number).
- How many schools used a private security firm in the 2008 - 2009 academic year? (Please give a number).
Information supplied:
- No schools are fitted with metal detectors.
- Of the 70 schools that have provided us with information on panic buttons, 14 have them installed
- We do not hold this information, it may be that schools themselves would record this data. A list of Plymouth Schools can be found at: http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/homepage/education/schools/plymouthschoolsdirectory.htm
- We do not hold this information.
Request number: 762648
Date request received: 4 January 2010
Date response issued: 1 March 2010
Information requested:
- How many and what proportion of employees within the local authority who have been obliged to undergo a CRB check are overseas workers?
- How many of them are from France or Australia?
Information supplied:
- We are unable to provide this information at present as we are in the process of migrating our data from older systems into a new human resources system and until this process is complete and a data validation exercise is carried out we are unable to guarantee the accuracy of the information held. We estimate that accurate information may be available in six months.
Request number: 765518
Date request received: 15 February 2010
Date response issued: 23 February 2010
Information requested:
- How many cover supervisiors do all the schools in your local authority currently employ? (please provide a breakdown of schools and the number of cover supervisiors each school employs)
- How many times in the academic year 2008 - 2009 have schools in your local authority used a cover supervisor to cover for a single teacher for more than three days in a row? (please provide a breakdown with each school and how many times they have used cover supervisors in this way.
Information supplied:
Unfortunately we do not hold the information that you have requested, it is likely however that this level of information would be held by schools direct. Detail of all the schools in Plymouth can be found on our website at the following address: http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/homepage/education/schools/plymouthschoolsdirectory.htm
Request number: 765623
Date request received: 16 February 2010
Date response issued: 16 March 2010
Information requested:
- The number of teachers, classroom assistants or other employees and, or contractors working for any school in your local authority area that are currently included under the sexual offenders register.
- The number of teachers, classroom assistants or other employees and, or contractors who are included under the sexual offenders register and have worked for a school in your local authority area in the past five years.
- The number of teachers, classroom assistants or other employees and, or contractors who have worked for a school in your local area and subsequently had their employment terminated after they were found to be on the sex offenders list in the last five years.
Information supplied:
We do not hold any recorded information relating to sex offenders working in schools. When a new staff member is employed or those engaged in voluntary activities any issues relating to sex offences would be shown on their CRB disclosure and the head teacher would be contacted direct and advised not to engage the person.