Social services leaders across South East Wales foster new arrangement for supporting vulnerable children and young people
Strong and responsive leadership, supported by an increased approach to collaborative working – that was what social services directors agreed was needed to improve the outcomes for Wales’ vulnerable people during a national social services conference earlier this year.
This approach underpins a new collaboration involving the 10 local authorities across South East Wales and their children’s services directors who have agreed to work together, rather than as individual authorities to improve the quality and choice of placements for vulnerable children and young people.
Speaking on behalf of the South East Wales Improvement Collaborative (SEWIC) Cllr Annette Davies, Cabinet Member for Rhondda Cynon Taf said:
“I am delighted to be launching this new Regional Commissioning Unit. Each local authority involved in this new collaboration is committed to the project’s three core principles: firstly, having a shared focus on improving the outcomes for children and young people, secondly working together to make better use of limited local authority resources and thirdly, working together to re-shape the services that already exist across South East Wales to ensure that all foster care placements are appropriate for children and young people, offer stability and are of the highest quality.”
“Local authorities are facing some of their toughest financial times. Service pressures are growing, yet the resources available to deliver these are becoming increasingly finite. As public finances tighten over the next few years, this partnership along with the Children’s Commissioning Support Resource (CCSR) will be supporting local authorities to achieve much better value for money when commissioning placements as well as supporting the development of placement choice in the market.”
Steward Greenwell, Chair of the Project Board and Newport’s Care and Customer’s Director added:
“I am confident that SEWIC, working closely with CCSR and Value Wales, will deliver more value of money for local authorities, will lead to significant system improvements and most importantly will secure the best possible outcomes for vulnerable children and young people who need our services most.”
He added:
“SEWIC will be working closely with the CCSR an excellent example of successful partnership working between local authorities, the private sector, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Welsh Local Government Association and the Local Government Data Unit.”
“CCSR is a system unique to Wales, a purpose-built database providing information about placement provision across Wales. Indeed, it is already providing an accurate picture of placement provision, current vacancies and the overall usage of placements and is supporting Wales’ three regional collaborative children’s services commissioning projects. Over time, this system will allow for even better-informed commissioning of services which in turn will lead to even more effective use of local authority resources.”
The 10 local authorities involved in the SEWIC partnership are: Torfaen, Caerphilly, Bridgend, Cardiff, Monmouthshire, Newport, Vale of Glamorgan, Blaenau Gwent, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil.
To achieve the projects objectives, the consortium has been also been engaged in negotiations with independent sector providers to secure a standard basic fee for foster care placements and where possible volume discounting arrangements.
Other similar collaborations using CCSR are being considered by other regions across Wales. For example, North Wales is looking at improved service delivery around short breaks for disabled children and Mid and South West Wales are looking at ways to make savings around the cost of social care packages without loss of quality.
Further information on the SEWIC children’s services commissioning project is available at:
http://www.ssiacymru.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2484
Further information on CCSR is available at: www.dataunitwales.gov.uk/Data
