Agenda item

Report of the Executive Director of People

The Cabinet considered a report of the Executive Director of People that sought approval of Children’s Internal Residential Care Redesign to improve the quality of children’s homes provided by the Council.

The Ofsted Inspection of Coventry’s Children’s Services published in March 2014 judged the three areas of ‘Looked After Children’, ‘Leaving Care’ and ‘Adoption Performance’ as requiring improvement. The Improvement Notice issued to Coventry City Council on 30th June 2014 included the requirement to address the areas of improvement identified by the inspection of services for children undertaken by Ofsted, including services for children looked after.

In response to the need to improve Children’s Services in Coventry, The Children’s Services Strategy 2016 – 2018 was developed, this set out a Vision for Children’s Services and a detailed transformation programme that supported the improvement of Children’s Services.

The improvement of these services sat within the context of a significant savings pressure for Children’s Services with a requirement to achieve in excess of £4 million in 2017/2018, rising to in excess of £11 million from 2018/2019.

The Children’s Services Transformation Programme converted the vision for the service into action that would ensure sustainable service improvement in Coventry. The programme comprised of eight discrete projects, largely falling under the two broad themes of workforce redesign and looked after children placements.

Children’s Internal Residential Care Redesign was one of the eight projects and set out to improve the quality of children’s homes provided by the Council, whilst realising revenue benefits. It was planned that the redesign of the service would reduce spend on external residential provision by creating additional internal capacity, utilising the existing resource tied up in the current provision. The proposal was to provide homes with additional capacity, higher levels of occupancy and improved quality of care that represented better value for money.

A stakeholder consultation process on the proposal, approved by the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People at his meeting on 16th November 2016 (his minute 5/16 referred), took place between 1 December 2016 and 13 January 2017.

The report set out the primary business drivers for the reconfiguration of Gravel Hill and The Grange children’s homes in Coventry into 4 smaller group homes which would present a more coherent, modern and suitable model of provision for the future care of Coventry’s children and young people who required a residential base for their time in care.

Both current homes would be de-commissioned and The Grange children’s home sold, with a re-investment of the capital proceeds in the purchase of three new properties which would be registered with Ofsted as children’s homes providing 12 residential placements in total. In addition, Gravel Hill would be subjected to a short phase of refurbishment and re-modelling so as to be re-opened as a new 4 bed home giving a total in-house provision of 16 beds.

The re-location of Coventry’s children’s homes presented the opportunity to adopt a new model of residential care which was modern, progressive and fit for the future.

Though this proposal has been formulated primarily to improve practice and outcomes for children living in residential care, it was nevertheless anticipated that financial benefits would accrue. These were currently estimated to be up to £879k per annum, derived from having a greater in-house capacity and a corresponding reduction in the number of external placements needing to be purchased.

RESOLVED that the Cabinet agrees:

1.  The newly configured model for children’s residential care outlined in the report.

2.  The sale of The Grange children’s home and the re-investment of the capital proceeds into the purchase of three new homes which will be registered with Ofsted as four bed children’s homes.

3.  The re-modelling and refurbishment of Gravel Hill children’s home as one of the new homes, as a more cost-effective option for the council.

4.  The purchase of the three new homes using corporate capital resources pending capital receipt from disposal of The Grange.