Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member: Children, Education & Families

Forward Plan Ref: 2013/035

Contact: Matthew Edwards, Corporate Parenting Manager Tel: (01865) 323097

Report by Director for Children’s Services (CA12).

This paper outlines the vision, approach and scope of the Placement Strategy for Children in and on the edge of care.  The strategy is based on the fundamental principle of ‘keeping our riskiest and most vulnerable children closest".  Some children will require very specialist placements out of county but for the large majority we need to be able to place, educate, and provide therapeutic support within Oxfordshire.  Whilst improving outcomes is Oxfordshire County Council's primary concern an important driver is also recognizing that high  quality saves and poor quality costs in terms of expenditure on our looked after children .

The Placement Strategy sets out how Oxfordshire   County Council along with key partners will strengthen edge of care interventions to keep children with their families, support friends and family care arrangements,  increase in-house  fostering for harder to place children and build on the work that has been so successful in achieving permanency for many of our looked after children.  One critical work stream of the placement strategy requires capital investment to move forward: increasing in-house, in-county residential provision.

The proposal is for the creation of an additional 12 assessment beds in 2 homes [6 beds in each] and 8 ‘move-on’ beds for 16-18 year olds  in 2 further homes [4 beds in each]

This will create an overall in county in-house residential pathway capacity of 32 beds

It is proposed that surveys will be conducted on already identified sites within the County’s existing property estate. Estimates suggest that this initial survey work will cost £150k.  The estimated overall spend to build the 4 homes is £7M but this will be exactly quantified post survey results.

The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to:

(a)              approve the placement strategy; and

(b)              endorse the initial approach to increase in-county residential capacity and give approval for a detailed survey of potential sites to be undertaken followed by more detailed costings and return to cabinet for consideration.