Up to six more co-operatives will be set up to take responsibility for commissioning care placements in their regions, backed by £10.8m, as DfE bids to make model the norm across England.
More regional care co-operatives (RCCs) will be set up under the Department for Education’s (DfE) plan to make the model the norm for commissioning care placements across England.
It will provide £10.8m over the next two years to enable up to six more regions to set up co-operatives, to join the two existing “pathfinders” in the South East and Greater Manchester, the department said, in a policy statement released today.
The DfE will ask for expressions of interest from regions to form RCCs this spring. But while operating within a co-operative is currently voluntary for local authorities, the department said it would also be exploring how it could make it mandatory during this phase of the policy’s development.
This is in line with its ambition, set out by children’s minister Josh MacAlister in November, for RCCs to become “the future basis for creating homes for children in care”.
What are regional care co-operatives?
The DfE has stated that RCCs should, as a minimum:
- Work with the NHS and criminal justice agencies to analyse regional data and forecast the future demand for homes for children in care.
- Develop and publish a strategy outlining current provision and identifying actions needed to address any gaps in care.
- Act as a single customer for external care providers across the region to commission the required placements in order to meet need and improve value for money.
- Create new care provision in response to identified gaps.
- Have a regional recruitment hub to recruit new foster carers and enhance support for all carers.
- Have robust leadership and governance structures to enable swift decision making and long-term investment.
Every council to be part of an RCC
MacAlister’s ambition was restated in the DfE policy statement, which said: “The vision is for every local authority to be part of an RCC in the future, operating at scale to deliver homes for children in care and delivering what matters most: children thriving in safe, supporting environments.”
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently going through Parliament, would enable the government to direct two or more local authorities to form co-operatives in their areas.
However, the policy statement said that the DfE would explore how to make RCC membership mandatory for local authorities by making it a criterion of receiving certain tranches of funding from the government.
Reduced funding for new RCCs
In its policy statement, the DfE said it would be providing more than £10m to help set up up to six new RCCs. Its separate fostering action plan, also published today, confirmed the figure as being £10.8m over the next two years.
This amounts to less than the resource that was made available for the South East and Greater Manchester to set up their co-operatives.
They received £5m each to fund new placements, while the South East was given £1.95m and Greater Manchester £1.5m to develop their co-operative, meaning about £13.5m was provided in total.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), which consists of the 10 local authorities and regional mayor Andy Burnham, is managing the area’s RCC, while the South East councils have set up a not-for-profit company, Home and Future, to run their co-operative.
What South East RCC has achieved
The DfE’s policy statement set out what the two pathfinders had achieved since their establishment last year. It said Home and Future, of which 17 of the South East’s 19 authorities are, or soon will be, members, had:
- Developed a regional data platform to help analyse placement sufficiency, forecast need and benchmark costs.
- Helped develop new beds in local authority-run children’s homes.
- Developed an agreement for councils to share placements.
- Started transitioning towards managing all the commissioning frameworks for residential placements across the region, as well as developing new ones.
- Established a workforce academy, to develop new training provision for staff.
- Started incorporating fostering into its work in partnership with the region’s fostering hub.
Greater Manchester’s progress so far
The Greater Manchester RCC had also developed a regional data and demand forecasting system, which the DfE said was “strengthening planning and market oversight”.
It had boosted the supply of specialist residential homes solely for children from the region, with funding from the NHS, to help address mental health needs, and had secured investment for the workforce, including to help registered managers in children’s homes gain higher level qualifications.
The DfE said that by acting as a single regional customer, the Greater Manchester co-operative was strengthening councils’ collective leverage over providers and reducing reliance on out-of-area care.
Source: Community Care, Mithran Samuel
