UPDATE NO 310 13 July 2018

Complex LAC and Edge of Care Project

The next project meeting will be on Thursday 26^th July 1.30 – 4.30pm at Mary Sumner House, 24 Tufton St, Westminster, London SW1P 3RB

Authorities who want to use the tool kit that we have developed and participate in the next stage in the project really need to be represented at this meeting as we will spend a considerable amount of time going through the toolkit and the guidance.  The event is most relevant to LAC Service Managers and Commissioners, if you would like to attend and haven’t already booked a place, please can you do so by Friday 20^th July at the latest by contacting Mark Evans (details below).  

The authorities and representatives who have already booked are:

Oxfordshire; Hampshire; West Sussex; Portsmouth; Brighton & Hove; West Berks; and Kent

General Update on the Project

Following the workshop on 16^th March 2018 and subsequent discussions with the DCS group we now have 17 (out 19) authorities wishing to actively participate. Our initial survey which was fully or partially responded to by 9 authorities, indicated that many LAs have difficulty in categorising young people according to need or risk factors, while they have precise data about cost.

We concluded that there was little point in re-running the survey for the joining authorities as it was likely to produce similar results; this would have been frustrating and time consuming for everyone and unlikely to have moved the project forward; however, we do need to have some baseline data to help us to understand the issues and make some recommendations for the future. Consequently we developed a toolkit which has 3 key purposes: 

• To help develop a regional needs profile of LAC with complex needs across the SE (and later also to add Edge of Care).
• To provide a useful aid to individual authorities in identifying their commissioning needs for both groups.
• To support the development of local and regional sufficiency strategy for LAC with complex needs (and later Edge of Care)

The tool kit has been piloted by two authorities and will be rolled out to others at the meeting on the 26th July.

For more information please contact Mark Evans or Rosemary Perry (details below)

Consultation on 2018-19 DCS Peer Challenge Arrangements

The DCS meeting earlier today (Friday) agreed to carry on with the development of the “Trial Run” Regional Improvement Plan (The restricted v1.6 now available to DCSs only).  

The SESLIP team is preparing missing sections on continuing and new SESLIP improvement activities as well as ensuring co-ordination with the PiP and LGA support programmes.

For more information please contact Anna Wright or Richard Tyndall (details below).

We are also starting to make the detailed arrangements for the peer challenge of self-assessment arrangements that will culminate in the Regional Improvement Summit on 22 March 2019. 

In the first instance this will involve Isabelle Gregory (details below) liaising with DCSs: others will be involved in due course.  

Three Reports on Children’s Services Finances

There have been three reports published recently on the state of financing in Children’s Services; they are:

• Understanding the drivers of spend in children’s services by LGA
• Public spending on children 2000 to 2020 by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner
• Storing Up Trouble by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children

These reports all support the themes of the ADCS Presidential Address given by Stuart Gallimore (DCS East Sussex)