Issue - meetings

Report of the Deputy Chief Executive (People)

The Cabinet considered a report of the Deputy Chief Executive (Place) on proposals for children’s external residential services. The report sought approval for the commissioning of 25 external residential children’s home beds by way of establishing a Dynamic Purchasing System.

The Local Authority had a duty under the Children Act 1989 to ensure that it had sufficient good quality placements to meet the needs of its looked after children.  These should be within the Local Authority’s area, providing this was in the best interests of the child.

The Council had set out how it would fulfil its ‘sufficiency duty’ in accordance with section 22G of the 1989 Children Act in its Placements Sufficiency Strategy 2016/17, and further expand on the vision for children’s Services, and how this linked strategically to other improvement activity, in the Children’s Transformation Strategy.

Central to the vision was the knowledge that children grew up most successfully in a family environment, and therefore the cornerstone of the Placements Sufficiency Strategy was to increase the number of children who were placed with internal foster carers. Ambitious targets had been set for the City Council Fostering Service, and there had been an increase in children placed with internal foster carers from 149 in April 2016 to 180 in February 2017.

However, residential care would remain a positive option for some children and young people – in particular for those who were older when they entered care, or would not thrive in and/or did not want a family setting to replace their own.  On average, Coventry placed around 13% of it’s looked after children in residential provision. The aim was to reduce this to 10%, equating to approximately 60 children, in line with the national average

Coventry currently used a range of residential children’s home provision, including internal provision delivered by the City Council and externally commissioned provision delivered by private providers. This included a block contract with Hexagon Care, for 17 residential beds within the city catering predominantly for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, that would expire in October 2017.

The proposal outlined was to re-commission a block contract for 25 beds in 4 – 5 bedded homes, within or close to the City boundary. This new provision would not be instantly recognisable as children’s homes, they would be more easily identified as homes for children with an aim to create something more akin to normal family life. The intention was to award contracts to a number of providers so there was a more diverse market of providers and provision in the city. The length of the contract would be 3 years, plus a possible extension of up to 2 years.

Overall, a total of 41 beds would be available in the city; 25 through the new block contract and 16 through the reconfiguration of the internal residential service approved at by the Cabinet at their meeting on 7th March 2017 (minute 121/16 referred). Needs analysis had shown that there were approximately 20 children who would require  ...  view the full minutes text for item 138