DCLG to fund community role in delivering children's services

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is to fund around 25 local authorities to develop new ways to deliver services at neighbourhood level, working with local people and organisations to find "innovative" solutions to local problems.

The initiative is the latest move by government to get community organisations more involved in delivering children’s services, and comes just months after it unveiled plans for councils to be able to outsource children’s social care duties to non-profit companies and charities.

Children's services is one of three areas the DCLG's Delivering Differently in Neighbourhood programme is to prioritise, along with adult social care, and environment and culture services.

The programme prospectus, published on Tuesday, lists child sexual exploitation, children's disability services, early help and forced marriage prevention for young people as examples of services that authorities could develop projects around.

It says the programme is interested in funding projects that seek to devolve greater responsibility to parish and town councils, with up to a third of the successful bids expected to do this.

"We will support projects to develop neighbourhood service approaches in specific areas or across an authority or authorities, particularly those that involve the voluntary and community sector and the wider community in designing and delivering services," the prospectus states.

Each successful bid will receive an unringfenced grant of up to £90,000. The DCLG will also offer support to develop feasibility studies for projects, an implementation plan and cost-benefit analysis model.

Phase one of the two-year programme will see some projects begin operating early next year, while a second phase will fund projects that require further development with the aim that they will be up and running early in the 2015/16 financial year.

Expressions of interest should be made by 15 December.