Cabinet:

1. Granted authority to proceed to the procurement of block residential provision.

2.     Agreed the decision to allocate funds for each of the following seven years is delegated to the Director of Children’s Services, following consultation with the Lead Member of Children’s Services and the Chief Operating Officer.

Councillor Robert Benham, Cabinet Lead Member for Education, Children and Families, presented the report to Cabinet detailing proposals to procure for the block provision of 35 residential placements for Looked After Children (LAC), across 8 North East London Authorities.

The Department of Education’s (DfE) Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme has awarded the East London Health & Care Partnership (formerly the North East London Sustainability and Transformation Partnership) (the “Partnership”) £782,750 (with a further £53,000 dependent upon satisfactory evaluation of the project).

The award is over a period of three years to jointly commission up to 35 Looked After Children (LAC) residential placements within the geographical footprint of Northeast London. 

The Partnership brings together 8 Local Authorities and 12 NHS organisations in the areas within:

·       The London Borough of Havering

·       The London Borough Barking and Dagenham

·       The London Borough of Tower Hamlets

·       The London Borough of Newham

·       The London Borough of Waltham Forest

·       The London Borough of Redbridge

·       The Corporation of the City of London

·       The London Borough of Hackney

Havering is the lead authority and will be responsible for contract procurement, management and monitoring functions.

The report before Cabinet proposes that each of the Local Authorities in the Partnership, with the exception of City (because they currently have no residential LAC placements) allocate up to, £650,000 per year over eight years to jointly commission up to 35 residential placements within the footprint of the Partnership.

Placements will not be at 100% occupancy from the outset of the contract. The local authorities in the partnership will identify how many LAC they can transfer into the new placements and the expected timescales they can move towards 100% occupancy. The contract will allow the Partnership only to pay for the used beds during the scale up to 100%.  At full occupancy Individual Local Authority savings of £241,433 per year will be achieved.

Placing children and young people nearer to their home communities will also have improvedlife experience and outcomes for children in residential care. 

The partnership is stipulating a number of outcomes successful providers must deliver, including:

• Improved placement stability measured by the Stability Index and number of placement breakdowns

• Improved placement suitability measured by in-placement interviews with young people and the number of unplanned placement moves
• An increase in the number of young people placed through this programme in Education Employment or Training
• Increase in young people staying put in residential placements until the age of 21
• Increase in the number of LAC ‘stepping down’ out of residential care.
• Decrease in unauthorised absence from placement and missing episodes
• Decreased risk of sexual exploitation; and
• Decrease in the number of engagements with the criminal justice system

Members agreed this was a very good proposal and one that demonstrated how Local Authorities can work very well together.

The estimated value of the 8 year contract across all partners is c. £36.8M giving rise to potential savings of £13.5M. The Havering element of this is £5.3M and £1.9m respectively.

As the process moves on further detail will be available.  The procurement will allow greater control over the quality of provision and it is proposed that authorities will work more collaboratively with providers.

Cabinet:

1. Granted authority to proceed to the procurement of block residential provision.

2.     Agreed the decision to allocate funds for each of the following seven years is delegated to the Director of Children’s Services, following consultation with the Lead Member of Children’s Services and the Chief Operating Officer.