Homes for Children and Young People in Coventry 2023-27 (Sufficiency Strategy)

Foster Care

Coventry City Council is committed to ensuring high-quality local placements are available to meet the diverse needs of Coventry’s children who are looked after, when they are unable to continue living with their family, and preferably place them within a family setting.

• 74% of all CLA placed in foster care
• 137 children in IFA placements
• 385 CLA are in internal placements
• 74% of fostering placements are Coventry Foster Carers

Internal Fostering

The Fostering Service sits within Children’s Services as part of the Looked After Children service and has responsibility for the recruitment, assessment and support of foster carers and the assessment and support of special guardians.

The Fostering Service has grown significantly in the past seven years. The Fostering Transformation Project took place between April 2016 and March 2021. The project was successful in increasing the number of occupied internal mainstream fostering placements from 149 to 266 during this period.

The work of the Connected Persons Team has also grown since 2017. Initially, this was as a result of improvements in the consistency of practice in supporting connected persons households as foster carers.

Since April 2021, improvements in support to Connected Persons, Foster Carers and Special Guardians have been strengthened by becoming a key workstream of the Coventry Family Valued Programme. It is the aim of Children’s Services that as many children becoming looked after as possible can be supported to live with a connected carer. Around half of all children looked after in Coventry are cared for by a fostering household approved by the Fostering Service.

Following the end of the project, ongoing targets for growth continued to be set to enable more looked after children to experience family life close to their home. However, these targets have not been met, with the number of children living in a mainstream fostering household remaining largely static since March 2021. On 31/3/23 there were 266 children placed in an internal mainstream fostering placement. This was a shortfall on the target for this number to be 285. The current target for occupied internal mainstream placements is to be 299 by 31/3/24.

At the 31 March 2023 there were 724 children in the care of Coventry Children’s services. Of these 724 children, 503 children were placed in foster care, with 385 of these placed with Coventry foster carers. This equates to 76% of those children in foster care are placed with internal fostering provision, an increase from 69% in March 2022. 118 children were placed with independent fostering agencies which is a decrease from 163 in IFA placements in 2022.

Of the total number of looked after children 53% are placed with Coventry foster carers. This is a similar percentage to that on 31/3/21 although this figure is impacted by the rise in unaccompanied asylum seeking children placed in supported accommodation in Coventry through the National Transfer Scheme.

Service Intentions

Fostering Excellence Project:

In response to the stalling in internal mainstream fostering growth, the service began work with the commercialisation team to consider ways to address this. This work is titled the Fostering Excellence Project. The project was started in October 2022 and aims to address the barriers to ongoing growth through three workstreams:-

• Brand Awareness & Marketing Activity
• Improved Processes & IT Infrastructure
• Departmental Review including enhanced foster carer training & support.

Key aims to:

• Continue to develop further support to ensure placement stability and permanence by reviewing the placement matching.
• Support foster carer confidence in caring for teenagers and children with behaviours that challenge.
• Continue to develop foster carers who can care for children with disabilities. There is an increasing gap with fewer skilled foster carers available to care for children with disabilities.
• Recruit further carers to the in-house out of hours rota of foster carers to ensure placements are available as needed outside of office hours.

In addition, a new post for a Placements Liaison Officer is being created to focus on placement searching for those children who either need to move from a residential placement into fostering or need to move between fostering placements to achieve permanence.

External Foster Care – IFA market

To complement our internal provision and provide greater placement choice, particularly where needs cannot be met by internal provision, Coventry commissions placements from the external IFA market via the West Midlands Fostering Framework, the current regional contracting arrangements. As of 31st March 2023, around 82% of IFA placements were made through this arrangement.

Whilst the framework has served Coventry well in securing general placement offers, it has worked less well in being able to offer local placements. There is a need for IFAs to develop more local placements to enable children to live closer to their support networks and avoid disruption to their education and healthcare plans/service agreements.

The current IFA framework is due to expire in March 2024. Working with the West Midlands Commissioning Hub that Coventry hosts, Coventry is leading on the recommissioning of the West Midlands Regional Fostering Framework on behalf of the region. Regional commissioners are keen to encourage IFAs to provide West Midlands placements for West Midlands children.

Within The West Midlands Fostering Framework, there are specific providers who recruit foster carers for Step Down from Residential to Fostering Care for those children and young people who are ready to move from residential into fostering. Coventry’s Commissioning Team is undertaking targeted work with approximately 6 providers who provide the majority of Coventry’s IFA placements, to establish relationships that support CLA to step down from residential care to fostering provision. The aim is to increase the number of children and young people living within a family setting where possible.

This project will work with these specific providers, as well as the Placements Liaison Officer mentioned above, to effectively plan the step down in the best interest of the children and young people and will help Coventry in meeting three key priorities:

• Improve placement stability,
• Reduce the number of children in residential care,
• Keep children in and near to Coventry.

The Commissioning team is reviewing current arrangements to look to enhance local sufficiency for all children within fostering, including looking at a range of contracting arrangements, such as block contracts.

Commissioning Intentions

• Continue to develop further support to fostering providers to ensure placement stability by reviewing the placement matching, particularly where there are children already in the household and/or there are family pets.
• Work with IFAs to seek foster carers who are confident to care for teenagers and children with behaviours that challenge.
• Work with IFAs to seek foster carers who are confident to care for children with disabilities. There is an increasing gap with fewer skilled foster carers available to care for children with disabilities.
• Work with IFAs to secure a number of emergency foster carers who are able to place a child at short notice.
• Coventry would like to work with providers in increasing the supply of local placements which meet all of the child’s identified needs.
• Coventry City Council is leading on the West Midlands Regional Fostering Framework, working with the 13 West Midlands Local Authorities and providers to develop and improve the West Midlands Regional Fostering Framework to meet the needs of children and young people.

Residential Children’s Homes

Coventry recognises that the preferred option for most children is to be cared for in foster care, but residential care can be a positive option for some young people.

As of 31 March 2023, there were 14 children’s homes including one residential special school currently registered with Ofsted in Coventry. The total capacity of these 14 homes amounts to 54 long-term placements for CLA and 4 respite placements. There is also one CQC registered home that has five placements for people aged 16-25 with mental health and/or learning disability needs.

Although there are seemingly enough beds to accommodate most of Coventry’s CLA within Coventry, there are barriers to accessing local placements which include competing with other local authorities for placements, and local provision may not meet the need for same day placements and complexity of need/behaviour. Most of the homes are registered for CLA with Emotional, Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with a small number able to deliver placements for CLA with mental health needs, learning disabilities or sensory impairments.

An analysis of need in 2022 suggested that approx. 15% of Coventry’s CLA that require residential care have complex needs and challenging behaviours which mean they need a more intensive or bespoke placement than an EBD bed and can make it particularly difficult to find a suitable placement for them.

This situation is not unique to Coventry, there are many local authorities struggling to find suitable placements for children with more complex needs; the lack of placements and competition in the market can result in young people being placed in unsuitable provision who can go on to experience multiple placement breakdowns, which in turn exacerbates their needs.

There are a number of reasons for this complexity of need, with young people presenting with increased risk(s) that can include:

• Increased verbal and physical aggression
• Missing episodes
• Levels of substance misuse
• Traits of ASD and ADHD which may not have been diagnosed.
• Criminality
• Complex and challenging behaviour
• Poor emotional health and well-being, mental ill-health
• Levels of self-harming behaviours to themselves and others
• Gang affiliation or possible links to gangs
• Vulnerability of exploitation e.g., ‘county lines’
• Experience of multiple placements, and placement breakdown

71 CLA placed in residential provision on 31/03/23

Of the 71 children, 43 are male (61%) and 28 are female (39%)

43 children are 11-15 years (60.5%), 27 are 16-17 years (38%)

Of the 71, 57 have EBD/ Complex needs and 14 have specialist needs

Internal provision

Coventry has five of their own homes - four homes deliver long term care to children who display EBD and one home delivers short breaks to children with disabilities. All homes deliver a ‘Good’ service and have held a consistent level of occupancy since opening.

The homes ensure that children can remain local, keeping links with family and friends, continuing to attend local educational provision, and access to health services.

Service intentions

In the short-term, plans are in place and work is underway to create 2 new residential homes – a residential home for children with disabilities and a ‘same day, short stay’ emergency home.

In the medium term, Coventry proposes to create more internal provision to ensure it can meet its sufficiency needs, with a residential strategy being developed for the next 3 years.

External residential market

Coventry follows a mixed market approach to commissioning residential care placements from the external market.

Current residential placements are commissioned through a number of contracts:

• A Partnership Call-off Flexible Framework Contract with 2 providers.
  • Each provider provides 1 local four bedded home supporting CLA with EBD/Complex needs, this provides 8 block beds in total.
  • A subsequent call off provided a further block contract for 4 floating beds for CLA with EBD/Complex needs, in residential homes in or close to Coventry.
  • A new block of 3 beds with therapeutic support for young people with more complex needs has been called off
• The West Midlands Residential Flexible Contracting Arrangement (FCA) is utilised when the block contracts are unable to meet needs.
• Spot Contracts are negotiated where these arrangements cannot meet needs.

The Commissioning team have been developing a ‘Hard to Place’ (H2P) contract based on the needs analysis that was carried out in 2022. This contract aims to engage with a small number of providers who will work in partnership with Coventry, based on relational practice, to meet the needs of the particular group of young people identified who have complex needs and challenging behaviours, providing a therapeutic supportive placement using experienced staff who will ‘stick with’ the young people even when they are being challenging.

This contract went out to tender and despite very positive feedback from the market, no providers tendered. As a result, the Commissioning team have been able to approach selected providers to potentially direct award the contract. A couple of providers who are new to Coventry have been awarded and are developing new provision in or close to the city and discussions are ongoing with a number of others who have expressed an interest.

Commissioning intentions

• Progress with the Hard 2 Place Contract to increase sufficiency for children who require more specialist provision.
• The Commissioning team will continue to build relationships with providers to develop their local footprint in Coventry to support our CLA to live local to Coventry where it is safe for them to do so, to maintain their support networks and reduce further disruption to their Education and access to wider support/health services.
• The Commissioning team will continue to work with providers when children’s placements become unstable to collectively work in the best interests of the young person, ensuring that where possible they are not moved in an unplanned way or in short timescales. This will ensure that young people are prepared for a move to take place, giving a new provider ample time to meet the child and make the necessary arrangements.
• Coventry occasionally requires a tier 4 bed for mental health or a secure welfare bed for a young person. These placements are under significant pressure nationally, when needed there is either no bed available or there can be 60+ national referrals for a place. Discussions are ongoing regionally to consider potential solutions collectively.
• A bid to pilot a Regional Care Co-operative is planned and would consider how such arrangements could improve the support available to the challenging cohorts of young people who all local authorities are struggling to place.
• Coventry is seeing an increase in the number of young people requiring a stepdown residential placement from Tier 4 mental health beds. These placements are particularly difficult to source, and the Commissioning team is keen to work with providers who can support these young people in a placement.
• The Commissioning team will continue to explore the benefits of wider placement support, for example a Placement Stability team who could be deployed to support the young person, carers and other professionals with targeted support to maintain placement stability.
• Coventry City Council is leading on the West Midlands regional residential framework and therefore will be working with the 13 West Midlands Local Authorities and providers to develop and improve the contract to get the best for children and young people.

Supported accommodation for 16+

Supported accommodation for young people provides accommodation with support for 16- and 17-year-old looked after young people and care leavers to enable them to live semi-independently. The aim of supported accommodation is to support young people to develop their independence in preparation for adult living while keeping them safe in a homely and nurturing environment.

• 21 CLA were placed in Supported accommodation on 31/03/23
• 58 UASC were placed in Supported accommodation on 31/03/23
• 3 parent & child placements in Supported accommodation on 31/03/23

Our current placing arrangements are via three block contracts. These block contracts offer 71 units of accommodation and 18 units of floating support to help young people when they move to their own tenancy.

A small number of additional units are purchased for young people with high support needs, who may be eligible for adult services or who require an out of city placement. These are spot purchased or secured via the West Midlands Supported Accommodation Framework. The Regional Framework and spot purchasing in addition to the block contacts, currently provide good capacity to meet placement needs.

The type of accommodation has been changed within the block contracts to reduce the number of solo placements and increase the number of shared houses to meet the needs of UASC young people. Some young people who have No Recourse to Public Funds (NRTPF) and who are awaiting a decision from the Home Office experience delays in being able to move on at aged 18 years. An alternative accommodation offer of 15 beds is available for this group, which allows them to live in low support accommodation independently until they gain status.

Coventry has a range of accommodation options available, which are provided through the 3 block contracts, regional framework and spot arrangements, the types of provision are:

The new West Midlands Regional Framework for Supported Accommodation providers has been in place since February 2022. This framework has appointed approximately 160 providers who successfully completed a rigorous selection process.

All supported accommodation referrals go to Coventry’s block providers first. Where a place cannot be found via the block, the referral will go out through the framework to source a suitable place. If the framework cannot supply a place, then spot purchased provision will be sought. The framework allows Coventry and regional colleagues to develop relationships with providers, promotes quality assurance of provision and ensures safety and value for money.

In Coventry, Young People move on into Social Housing/ their own Tenancy by the age of 18 years and 3 months. Coventry policy is to support Young People to 18 years and 3 months to allow them to bid for Social Housing in reasonable time following their 18th birthday. Once a successful tenancy is secured, Floating Support provision is available to support them to maintain their tenancy for a further 3 months. This additional support has resulted in very low rates of tenancy breakdown.

There are significant changes being introduced nationally in 2023-24 with the introduction of national standards for Supported Accommodation, as this market becomes regulated with the requirement for providers to register with Ofsted and prepare for Ofsted inspection. It is difficult to assess the impact of these changes on the market and there are concerns about the future capacity in the market if providers choose not to register or struggle with the registration process and are not registered by the 28 Oct deadline. This could have an impact on Coventry’s block contracts or on the West Midlands Framework that may require further action. Coventry Commissioning team is working closely with their block and other contracted providers and is participating in regional work with West Midlands colleagues to provide support to providers with these changes.

Commissioning intentions

• The Commissioning team will continue to work with providers to support them to register with Ofsted.
• The Commissioning team will continue to work with providers to support them to meet overall standards and the initial provision of quality documentation.
• The Supported Accommodation block contracts are due to expire in 2026. The Commissioning team will review the impact of the new standards and regulations on the market before planning the recommissioning of these contracts.
• The Commissioning team will continue to work with providers to meet the complexity of needs and behaviours that challenge, particularly relating to CSE, missing episodes, mental health, self-harm and aggression. This also relates to young people who have reached the age of 18 but are not eligible for statutory services.
• The Commissioning team will continue to work with Housing and providers to ensure there is a supply of quality accommodation within the city for young people to move on to.