Agenda item

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 specialist out of city provision to meet their needs, and these beds would be spot purchased or procured through the regional residential framework.

This proposal, and the reconfiguration of internal provision together represented the direction of travel for Coventry in relation to increasing local placement provision, and contributed towards a target reduction in expenditure across this area.  Further work would continue to be undertaken on the optimum mix of internal and external provision of children’s residential care, taking into account the Council’s aspiration to provide quality, cost effective local provision, based on an approach that maximised placement choice for children and is predicated on a mixed economy of care provision. This work would need to take into account the effectiveness of the new operating model for internal residential provision, as recent analysis had shown that the actual operating cost of the Council’s internal provision had not been cost effective. To ensure that there were clear, evidence-based recommendations about the balance of internal and external provision after the end of this contract, a commissioning review would be undertaken 24 months after delivery of the external provision had commenced in February 2020. This would examine the effectiveness of both the internal and external residential provision and make proposals regarding the mix of residential care. Prior to that, contracts would be robustly monitored through regular contract monitoring meetings and visits to providers, and the Director of Children’s Services would provide regular informal reports to the Lead Member for Children.

All the projects contributing to placement sufficiency were being delivered through the Children’s Transformation Board, which met monthly, which enabled risks and interdependencies to be identified and managed at a strategic level. 

The outcomes of the project would be:

•  An increase of local provision;

•  The ability to more effectively wrap multi-agency support services around children;

•  A tighter and closer network of residential care provision in and around Coventry, which could operate alongside a newly configured internal residential service;

•  All homes would be required to work in partnership, including monthly managers meetings, to maintain partnerships and encourage long-term planning;

•  Use of expensive emergency residential provision via spot purchase would be minimised.

Coventry would commission the service through a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) to bring a variety of providers into the city. The DPS was a two-stage process which allowed the flexibility to procure at the most appropriate times. In the initial set up stage all providers who met the selection criteria were admitted onto the DPS. In the second stage the Authority procured the beds over a period of time when required to avoid empty beds and over-commissioning. This reduced the risks of a standard block contract where all the beds were procured together as part of one tendering process. Providers could apply to join the DPS at any point during the lifetime of the contract allowing new entrants to the market. The DPS would be advertised in April 2017.

The cost of the 25 placements would be met from the existing children’s placements budgets and there was allowance for this within the Children’s Transformation Strategy.

Savings realised in the residential placements budgets would collectively come from:

•  A reduction in the residential cohort to 60 placements on average.

•  A lower average unit cost for residential placements, as a result of less spot contracts.

•  A lower average unit cost for fostering, as a result of an increase in the use of internal provision and a decrease in the use of external provision.

RESOLVED that the Cabinet approves the commissioning of 25 external residential children’s home beds by way of establishing a Dynamic Purchasing System.