Alan Wood backs national commissioning of children's home places
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
National commissioning of residential care placements for the most vulnerable children and young people could help improve service standards, Alan Wood, the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) has said.
Wood told MPs on the Commons public accounts committee that there is a lack of variety of residential care options to meet the complex needs of some looked-after children and that current provision is too focused on certain parts of the country.
Asked by the committee whether a specialist commissioning service for residential care, such as that developed for youth custody placements, could help address the current problems, Wood said an alternative to local commissioning of places needs considering.
“In respect of welfare secure placements for children, I think there is an argument for a national agency that commissions these for all local authorities,” he added.
Wood also said there is more local authorities should be doing to tackle problems with residential care provision.
He added: “A lot of residential provision is in the North West and Midlands and that in itself is a problem for authorities in the South.
“There is more local authorities could do to share the arrangements they have and perhaps there could be more cross-authority commissioning of places.”
Earlier Wood said residential care provision had failed to innovate to keep up with the “increasingly challenging” needs of the young people they care for. He cited child sexual exploitation, domestic violence and drug abusing parents as issues that are more prevalent for looked-after children now.
“The complexity of looked-after children and the lack of a broad enough range of residential provision is causing a problem,” he added.
In addition, Wood also called for a streamlining of the amount of care performance data that children’s services departments are required to submit to government, saying that existing arrangements do not properly reflect the outcomes for children and young people.
“We need a suite of data of about 25 to 30 indicators of children’s experiences that we can go out and measure by talking to parents, children and carers and from that draw a picture of the broad health of a children’s services department,” he said.
The Independent Children's Homes Association welcomed Wood's comments and said it had requested a meeting with him to discuss working together on reforms to commissioning.
The public accounts committee is holding an inquiry into the care of looked-after children following the publication of a critical National Audit Office report on care placements last November.
