Adult and Children’s Services Cabinet Member – Minutes – 27 March 2012

70 (70) REVIEW OF CHILDREN’S HOMES AND POST 16 ACCOMMODATION SUPPORT SERVICES – The  Director of Children and Young People’s Services submitted an urgent report seeking approval to review accommodation and simultaneously reshape the staffing from three North Lincolnshire Children’s Homes and the Post 16 Accommodation Support Service.

An urgent decision was required to ensure that the service was not detrimentally affected by impending Ofsted processes; so that the building was not targeted whilst no children were living there and was disposed of appropriately in accordance with council and Ofsted requirements. 

The Children’s Homes and Post 16 Accommodation Support Service review was part of the council’s delivery plan that underpinned the sufficiency strategy 2011/12.  The objective was to reshape the service to build a landscape of accommodation that reflected the council’s ambitions and fulfilled its sufficiency duty.

The council had already made a commitment to increased capacity in fostering and adoption services to increase the number of and availability of families and adopters.  The council’s goal was to ensure that children could have swift access to family placements and stability.

The council had committed £1,200.000 to build a purpose built Children’s Campus to ensure that those who remained in a Children’s Home had accommodation fit for the future and one which would support their welfare and development.

Proposals for the reshaping of the staffing from the three Children’s Homes and the Post 16 Accommodation Support Service, including financial implications, were contained in the report and accompanying appendices.

Resolved – That the recommendations, as set out in the report, be approved.

Note: Reports are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site). 

Where there is no report this is because it is exempt, as it contains information which is considered to be of a confidential nature, as detailed in the Local Government (Access to Information) Act.