Initial (Child Protection) Case Conference (574A/22)
Request
This is a request for information under the FOI Act.
1) Would you please tell me the number of invitations your force received to attend an initial (child protection) case conference for the time period outlined below, and how many of these conferences were attended?
Just to be clear, I want the figures to represent the number of Initial Case Conferences requiring police attendance (as per agreed Force process) and the number of those attended. I am assuming the information will be based on figures collated by District Safeguarding Units.
I am looking for this information to be broken down per month for the calendar years of 2020 and 2021, as well as the months of January, February and March of 2022. Can you please also provide the total invites/attendance for the whole period (i.e. 01/01/20 to 31/03/22).
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
Please note, the data included in the response does not include conferences attended by any PC/DC in Birmingham. It is also important to point out that WMP produces full reports for those conferences that aren’t attended. The main and consistent reason for non-attendance is either cancellation by the local authority, or meetings scheduled for the same time as others. Since September 2020 the way figures are collated and by whom have changed, as well as a change of those staff who attend and collated data over the time period. In addition, during lockdown, some of the ICPC continued on over Skype which we have tried to include.