Improving Permanency Outcomes and reducing costs Lou Williams: PCC Andy Elvin: TACT

Background The Council has £20m to save over next 2 years – around 20% of the controllable budget; This is on top of year on year savings over last few years; Children’s services largely protected to date but something has to give eventually; At the same time, we wanted to increase investment in support to children and young people in care and on the edge of care; While protecting investment in prevention and early help services, and; Ensuring that as many children and young people as possible benefit from secure and legally permanent homes; So we needed to identify an area where transformation would release funds for saving and investment . . .

Children and young people in care Around 365 children and young people in care; 100 placed with IFA foster carers; 154 placed with in-house carers; 41 in residential (at 11% this is = to national average but historically high for Peterborough); Age profile broadly in line with national averages; In-house fostering recruitment had made good progress since 2012 but appeared to have stalled, particularly where placements for older children and young people concerned; Adoption numbers declining with corresponding increase in number of children placed under Special Guardianship Orders; Overall placement budget around £12m per annum.

Children accommodated in last 12 months and still in care, by Foster Placement and Age

10-15 Year Olds aged 10+ When Placed: Number of Carers in Preceding 2 Years

Scope for investment and delivering savings? The 100 children and young people placed with IFA carers cost the council £1.5m to £2m per annum more than if we only used our own carers.

Supporting our Foster Carers Our foster carers do an incredible job, looking after our most vulnerable children and young people; However, they also told us that they need more support, especially if they are to look after more of our more high needs children and young people. They have said that they need: A better training and development programme, enabling them to meet more complex needs including those arising from disorganised attachments and helping children to recover from trauma; Availability of support on a 24/7 basis, including practical support in the home where necessary to preserve the placement; Improved access to psychological input and support to help them to support children and young people to change their problematic behaviour. And we should be doing this anyway . . .

Transformation . . . For our carers to have confidence to look after our most complex and vulnerable children and young people, we need to invest in training and support; To invest in training and support, we have to reduce use of high cost placements . . .

Structural issues Fostering, adoption and permanence services will never be the most important things in children's services or in LAs; Most senior management time is taken up by child protection services; This is a systemic issue that makes it hard for such services to be heard in LAs; Significant advantage in having a dedicated entity focussed solely on children in care or placed for adoption or SGO; This can be contract out or spin out, key is lack of CP distraction and dedicated whole service approach; HR and Finance are just as important as the social work side.

But this is first and foremost about outcomes . . . IFA carers are often further away . . . Further from families, friends, schools, local services, and; We know our carers; we know which children are most likely to ‘fit’.

Investment to improve outcomes… Use of Special Guardianship Orders has increased significantly and used for very much younger children; A priority was therefore to include improved support to carers under Special Guardianship Order within any new service, and to bring this into line with support to adopters; The largest group of children and young people who leave care are those who return home after a period being looked after (34% of care exits). Of these 50% come back into care, compounding earlier harm; A further priority was therefore to include improved support for children returning home from care; Taking these themes together, we decided to call the proposed new service the ‘Permanency Service’ reflecting what we are trying to achieve for children and young people.

Thinking differently… We published a tender inviting providers to bid to provide a range of services in early 2016: Fostering and Adoption services; Family Group Conferencing services; Placement matching services; Special Guardianship Order carer assessments; Post adoption and Special Guardianship Order support; New support services to help children and young people successfully return to their families having been in care; Crucially, the whole placement budget for children in care. We also asked potential providers to help us to think about new ways of bringing permanency to children and young people placed with long term foster carers.

Why include adoption services? We were concerned about breaking links within the City between fostering and adoption services; A number of effective approaches in existence that we did not want to interrupt, such as fostering for adoption; Adoption legislation requires adoption agencies to be not for profit agencies; The new service will be required to liaise closely with regional adoption arrangements.

A new approach to service commissioning Although legally this remains a commissioned service, we are seeking to enshrine the notion of partnership throughout; Carers, staff and young people contributed to the service specification; Carers, staff and young people were involved in the selection process after tenders had been received; The new service is governed by a joint governance board; Open book accounting is required and savings over and above those that the service is required to deliver are subject to a savings share: 33% to the Council to fund further savings; 33% to the Council to invest in prevention and early help; 33% to the Provider to invest in new services.

The outcome…. This was a large and complex bid; Four organisations were initially interested and three submitted full bids; The winning bidder was The Adolescent and Children's Trust (TACT); The winning bid was best overall and was also the most child- centred; After a period of mobilisation including TUPE transfer of staff, the service went live on 1st April 2017; The contract is for 10 years, with a possible 10 year extension.

Implications for staff and carers… Staff have transferred to TACT under TUPE and existing terms including pensions are protected TACT led the TUPE meetings which was very productive Foster carers are self-employed: we want them to transfer to TACT but there is no obligation – this highlights the need to ensure they are fully involved in the process Adoption processes continue as before, with Peterborough approved adopters being available for Peterborough and other children as appropriate In the event that the service comes to an unplanned end Staff would transfer back to the LA Foster carers would be invited to return – this would include all those recruited as part of this new model.

Why do we think this will work? Reducing spend on IFA placements is at the core of these proposals; Council foster carers benefit from stable relationships with Council but often receive lower allowances and have less support than IFA carers; IFA carers benefit from higher allowances and better support but take children from a wide range of councils; This approach offers the best of both worlds to foster carers – support from a specialist provider and a consistent relationship with the one Council; The savings share associated with transfer of the budget creates the financial incentive to ensure that foster carers able to meet the needs of children in care will be met; TACT, as a charity, is already working with other charities in Peterborough in order to increase family support and other services in the City.

TACT approach Children do not see legal orders; All placements require same kind of support; No more silos, generic family placement support teams; Joint training for foster carers, adopters and special guardians; Support for all is childhood long; All SGO assessments go to panel; TACT have FGC service; TACT run placement service.

Expected outcomes Lower cost service; This will be achieved by increased placement stability, fewer high cost placements, more edge of care work, increase in SGOs and in adoptions; Ongoing support and training for SG families will lead to more foster carers taking SGOs; Earlier FGCs will lead to better assessments, better preparation, better post placement support and fewer breakdowns; Also anticipating rise in adoptions through earlier sole dedicated worker led permanence planning; Key is making 10 year not 10 month decisions.

Securing improved outcomes This is about increasing the number of children benefiting from secure permanent care arrangements: TACT has an extensive track record in encouraging carers to seek SGOs for children in long term placements; TACT has developed an innovative approach that uses foster carers to model parenting approaches to families, building skills and making return home more likely to be successful; Support to Special Guardianship Order carers should reduce likelihood of arrangements breaking down in years to come; Adoption services remain a focus of the new organisation and the expectation is that adoption and Special Guardianship Order assessments are brought into line where possible; Children placed in foster care benefit from more local placements with carers who are better supported and who we know well.

Lessons learned…. Essential to keep key stakeholders involved and engaged; The whole process will take 50% longer than any estimate; Large complex bids of this nature also mean that potential bidders need plenty of time to absorb what is wanted of them; Transferring the budget for placements is the key driver; By ‘go-live’ date, TACT already recruiting more carers than PCC had; Staff, Carers and Members remain committed to the vision: More children in permanent care arrangements; Less spend on high cost placements; Investment in edge of care services; Protecting prevention and early help through increased efficiency.

More lessons Important all sections of the LA sign up to work constructively during mobilisation (Finance/HR); Allow plenty of time for TUPE consultation and involve staff in dialogue and encourage questions; Encourage and enable front door services to engage constructively with provider; Engage legal services and local Judiciary; Don’t shy away from difficult conversations in early stages of partnership/contract; Do not segment, keep all permanence and care services together Design a good governance structure involving members.

Conclusion Come on in, the water’s lovely; This is an achievable and practical way to deliver high quality and lower cost care and permanency services; Any questions?