North West initiative ensures sufficient quality placements

• Regional collaboration supports sufficiency in children’s social care provision
• Aims to improve outcomes for children and young people and deliver value for money
• Local authority members agree shared protocols and frameworks

ACTION

Placements North West (PNW) sees children’s services departments in 23 of the region’s councils work to shared protocols for how placements are offered and which care providers are used.

The arrangement, established in 2009, aims to improve the choice and quality of placements and ensure value for money.

Setting up such a collaborative partnership was not based on a “deficit model”, explains Sarah Alexander, assistant director of children’s services for Bolton Council, the lead PNW authority.

“It was based on a growing market and managing the volume [of placements],” Alexander adds. “The driving force is always quality and money – and you can always improve the market.”

Sarah Austin, PNW’s manager, expands further by explaining how the arrangement has evolved to fit the changing needs of children.

“It’s changed significantly since 2009,” she says. “With many more teenagers coming into care, we needed to make sure we had the right frameworks with risk management and due diligence to meet that current need as well.”

Austin stresses PNW is not a centralised service in that it does not “placement find” on behalf of its 23 local authority members. Brokerage teams in each authority are still responsible for sourcing appropriate placements for children and young people requiring council care.

She says a centrally funded PNW team, comprising herself as manager, a commissioning officer and a projects officer, supports each authority in terms of “skillsets, knowledge, mentoring and information”.

As part of the collaborative process, every member authority signs up to use purchasing systems for fostering, residential care and supported accommodation.

A fourth system for special educational needs and disabilities is due to be launched in January.

“For purchasing systems, we have protocols,” explains Austin. “For example, we have an information sharing protocol (ISP) which allows us to share information if we have any concerns about a provider – that could be criminal, quality, financial or safeguarding – so that ISP is then shared across all 23 [members].”

She says PNW’s role is to oversee the issuing of such ISPs to ensure authorities do not put themselves at risk.

“The ISPs are then rescinded if that has been rectified by the local authority that issued it,” she says.

For the authorities, being part of PNW brings with it an expectation that each will have a sufficiency strategy, Alexander says.

This means working together – and individually – to ensure there is enough choice and range of placements for children and young people.

“PNW is one route to getting that – as well as managing the market and its quality,” she explains. “But it’s not the only way to get placements and each authority will also have in-house foster placements and a range of other frameworks it might use to get placements.”

Austin says an annual “work plan” is signed off by the directors and assistant directors of children’s services from all 23 councils.

However, this collaborative approach does also allow for changes to what she describes as a “very clear robust model”.

“If I come across something I feel we might need to work on or that a group of providers have highlighted, that will go to our [meeting] groups to jointly agree whether that is something they want to take on – we do try to prioritise,” she says.

IMPACT

PNW manages a dataset provided by each authority giving the support service an understanding of the number of placements made, their costs and value for money.

Austin says it can be difficult to measure cost reduction because of the way each authority manages its care placements as well as the different routes into care.

“The frameworks do provide a level of due diligence so we can see year-on-year that the quality is improving for the placements that are available,” she says.

“We are also seeing greater engagements and more positive reviews from providers in terms of working with the collaborative.”

PNW also measures the amount of unplanned endings to placements, which Austin says is starting to show a downward trend.

Figures for children and young people being placed multiple times are also low for the region indicating stability is “very good” for the North West, she adds.

Read more in CYP Now's Shared Services Special Report