Agenda item

Cllr Tim Bearder, Cabinet Member for Adults, Karen Fuller, Director of Adult Social Services, Ian Bottomley, Head of Joint Commissioning – Age Well,  and Sharon Paterson, Commissioning Manager – Live Well, have been invited to present a report on Supported Independent Housing.

The Committee is asked to consider the report and raise any questions, and to AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet arising therefrom.

The Committee invited Karen Fuller, Director of Adult Social Services, Bhavna Taank, Head of Joint Commissioning – Live Well, and Jordan Marsh, Commissioning Officer, to present a report on Supported Independent housing.

The Head of Joint Commissioning - Live Well summarised the supported independent living report, highlighting current services for adults aged 18–65 with learning disabilities and autism. She noted challenges, including insufficient specialist accommodation and a fragmented provider market, but described ongoing improvements such as a strengthened provider framework and greater involvement of people with lived experience. Strategic priorities include expanding support for complex needs, increasing local provision for young adults, and reducing out‑of‑county placements. The Director added that, although Oxfordshire had been successful in supporting people at home, there remained a need for more specialist supported living units and continued strategic focus to address this gap.

Following the presentation, members held an extended discussion with officers that explored the cost, capacity, and operation of supported living services. The conversation began with concerns about overall value for money, given that the service’s £56 million budget equates to nearly £86,000 per service user, Officers explained that many supported living residents have highly complex needs, requiring intensive levels of support that inevitably drive costs.

The Director noted that, in practice, delivering this provision in‑house would likely be even more expensive because of staffing requirements. She acknowledged that the Council had not always managed the provider market as effectively in earlier years but emphasised that recent work had strengthened frameworks, set clearer expectations, and improved consistency across providers. She also stressed that every out‑of‑county placement was reviewed carefully, with the Council seeking local options wherever feasible.

Members then turned to whether the primary barrier to reducing out‑of‑county placements was the availability of suitable housing or the right support packages. Officers explained that, while both elements matter, the more significant constraint was the shortage of appropriate properties, particularly for people with the highest levels of need. New complex‑needs accommodation was being developed in Witney, Faringdon, and Chalgrove, and the provider framework already included specialist organisations able to deliver the care required. As a result, the main bottleneck lay in securing and adapting buildings, rather than in accessing support providers.

Discussion moved to how the Council planned for young people transitioning from children’s services to adult supported living, given the small but highly individualised nature of the cohort. Officers described a transition process that began at age 16, supported by link workers who assessed needs early and work with families to plan ahead. In the most complex cases, the Council collaborated with Homes England to obtain capital funding for bespoke properties. Although such cases were few in number, they represented disproportionately high costs. To understand future demand, the Council had commissioned a housing survey overlaying demographic data to forecast the need for specialist accommodation over the next decade. The Director observed that the process was complicated by the involvement of five district councils and that future local government reorganisation could streamline this work significantly.

Members also raised concerns about the challenges faced by residents when multiple teams and agencies must work together to deliver adaptations and support. One example highlighted the difficulty of coordinating the housing occupational therapy team, the children’s disability service, private sector housing functions, and district council disabled‑facilities processes. Officers recognised these issues and noted that, while working relationships with districts were constructive, the current arrangements were inherently fragmented and often slow. A unitary structure, they suggested, would remove many of these barriers and make the system easier for families to navigate.

Another point of discussion focused on how the Council gathers feedback from people using supported living services. Officers described several mechanisms designed to capture meaningful perspectives from those with lived experience. The Council commissioned My Life My Choice to run self‑advocacy groups and carry out unannounced quality checks, ensuring that individuals’ voices informed assessments of provider performance. The Learning Disabilities Improvement Board and the Oxford Family Support Network also offered regular insights from both service users and their families. In response to earlier feedback, the Council was re‑establishing a specialist learning‑disability team to strengthen reviews and improve support planning. Officers emphasised that people with lived experience frequently identified issues that professionals might have overlooked, making their involvement central to improving service quality.

The Committee next explored whether the Council provided assistance to families wishing to visit relatives placed in supported living outside Oxfordshire. Officers explained that financial support for travel was not normally offered. In most cases, decisions about out‑of‑county placements were made jointly by the individual and their family, and, when such choices were made, the expectation was that travel arrangements fell to those involved. The Council sought to provide in‑county options wherever possible but ultimately respected the choices people made about where they wished to live.

Members also discussed the composition of the supported living provider market. Officers confirmed that the framework was open to both private companies and charitable or voluntary organisations through a full tender and vetting process. There was a healthy mix of provider types, and all must meet the same quality requirements and were paid at identical rates, preventing any premium pricing by private organisations. People with lived experience were involved directly in the vetting of providers to ensure appropriateness and quality.

The final area of discussion centred on workforce pay. Officers confirmed that, as part of strategic contract reviews, the Council checked that all supported living staff receive at least the Oxford Living Wage^[1] or the real Living Wage^[2]. Procurement teams request evidence of compliance, and the wage level was considered affordable within the Council’s fee structure. Officers regularly reviewed job advertisements to monitor pay levels and believed the framework now provided fair and equitable funding, above the national living wage and aligned with Oxford City standards. They noted that this marked a clear improvement on previous years.

The Committee AGREED to the following actions:

• That user feedback and lived experiences, including input from people with learning disabilities and their families, would be brought to the Committee in future meetings.

• The Director agreed to provide a breakdown of the 58 supported living framework partners, specifying which were private and which were voluntary sector organisations.