Decision details
Secure Children’s Home for London and Pan-London Commissioning Vehicle
Decision Maker: Cabinet
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: Yes
Is subject to call in?: Yes
Purpose:
Children with particularly complex needs,
including those who are at significant risk of causing harm to
themselves or others, including risk to life, can be placed in a
secure children’s home when no other type of placement would
keep them safe. There is a significant shortage of national secure
children’s home provision as highlighted by OfSTED and London
has no provision. The numbers of children placed are small, but the
placements expensive. Further, where places are not available, the
alternatives, often requiring multiple ratios of staff for each
child, are amongst the costliest placements for children’s
services. For example, the Association of Directors of
Children’s Services (ADCS) recently highlighted more than
twenty local authorities paying over £20K per week
(equivalent to £1 million per year) and one case of
£49,680 per week (equivalent to over £2 million per
year).
There are few children requiring secure welfare provision and in
the last eight months to July 2022 the numbers per local authority
in London ranged from zero to three, with further children being
referred but unable to be placed because of a lack of
availability.
There is an opportunity now to develop and establish secure
children’s home (SCH) provision in London to bring additional
capacity to the market, with funds provided by the Department for
Education, but this requires a Pan-London approach.
It is proposed that a company, owned by London local authorities,
should be established to oversee the build, and contribute to the
development of the operating model for the new SCH provision, as
well as the commissioning arrangements to run the service. The PLV
will be a means to share the risks and benefits associated with
developing and running the SCH, with a key benefit being that
places at the new provision will be prioritised for the London
local authorities who opt in to join the PLV.
In the long term, it is intended that the PLV’s remit will
include other key pan-London commissioning arrangements that will
improve the lives of London’s children and young
people.
Decision:
DECISION
1. To agree to the Borough becoming a member of the jointly owned Pan London Vehicle for Commissioning.
a. The Pan London Vehicle (“PLV”) will be a company limited by guarantee (“CLG”) and owned by the London local authorities. The PLV will not be focussed on profit generation, and it is intended that any surplus generated by the PLV will be reinvested into its activities.
b. Be part of the PLV, secure children’s home provision for a five-year period from 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2028, with a break-point after two years once the refreshed business case has been developed to include service pricing structure, commissioning approach, practice model and location, the 20k per year membership payable for five years, has now been removed for the development stage (first two years) of the PLV, which will be funded by the Department of Education grant.
c. Collaborate with other PLV members on future joint commissioning programmes.
d. Commits in principle to joint oversight and risk/benefit sharing, through the PLV, of the secure children’s home provision, for a five-year period to 31st March 2028, including the build, service development and service commissioning phases, subject to ratification after the revision of the secure children’s home business case, and renewable on a ten yearly cycle thereafter, with break-point after five years.
e. Delegates authority to the Corporate Director, Children and Culture, in consultation with The Mayor to:
f. finalise the legal documents required to set up, join and run the PLV and
g. make the final determination on the Council’s membership of the PLV, following completion of the revised secure children’s home business case and, if appropriate, enter into all the legal agreements, contracts and other documents on behalf of the Council required to implement and run any aspect of the PLV arrangements.
2. To note the Equalities Impact Assessment as set out in Section 4 of the report.
Action by:
CORPORATE DIRECTOR, CHILDREN AND CULTURE (J. THOMAS)
Senior Commissioning Manager Integrated Commissioning (K. Sanderson)
Report author: Susannah Beasley-Murray
Publication date: 15/12/2022
Date of decision: 14/12/2022
Decided at meeting: 14/12/2022 - Cabinet
Effective from: 24/12/2022
Accompanying Documents:
PDF 255 KB