In January 2017 Bradford was awarded £3.2 million over 2 years from the DfE Innovation Fund.  There are 3 elements to the award:

1)        Reducing the need for children to come into care through stronger edge of care work.

2)        Improving our ability to provide high levels of care within our residential homes  through embedding a therapeutic “PACE” approach.

3)        Setting up two “mockingbird” hubs to improve support to foster carers working with  children with more complex needs.

After consultation with the Children in Care Council, the programme was named B Positive Pathways (BPP).  The Interim Strategic Director of Children’s Services will present a progress report on BPP (Document “X”).

Recommended -

That the Children’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee note the content of Document “X” and the progress of B Positive Pathways.

(Jim Hopkinson – 01274 432904)

In January 2017 Bradford was awarded £3.2 million over 2 years from the DfE Innovation Fund.  There were 3 elements to the award:

1)        Reducing the need for children to come into care through stronger edge of care work.

2)        Improving our ability to provide high levels of care within our residential homes  through embedding a therapeutic “PACE” approach.

3)        Setting up two “mockingbird” hubs to improve support to foster carers working with  children with more complex needs.

After consultation with the Children in Care Council, the programme was named B Positive Pathways (BPP).  The Interim Strategic Director of Children’s Services presented a progress report on BPP (Document “X”).

Updated appendices were tabled at the meeting.

It was reported that In November 2018, DfE gave permission to re-profile funds from the initial 2 year timeframe into a third year in line with delays encountered through recruiting specialist practitioners.

Members were informed that B Positive Pathways Programme (BPP) was an  innovation funded project that scaled the successful North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) ‘No Wrong Door’ innovation project to Bradford. No Wrong Door was a different approach to working with adolescents to prevent them entering the care system and to improve their long term outcomes. The model centred on a hub home with wrap around multi agency professionals working together. No Wrong Door had won several awards and had made a significant saving to the public purse in the approach that had been taken. A number of Local Authorities were looking to replicate this approach.

It was reported that BPP was fully funded for two years. There had been a staggered completion date for the two years in regard to partners. The Police partnership would be reviewed in March 2019 and the Health partnership would be reviewed in March 2020. By the third year for each partnership, the aim was to show the significant savings that had been made to ensure that the programme was supported financially for years three and four. There would be a full academic review of the programme (including a cost benefit analysis) to show impact with the research partners led by the University of Oxford Rees Centre.

Members were informed that the Hub Home and Children’s Specialist Centres had been inspected by OFSTED and two were judged as good and one required improvement.

It was reported that in January 2019 the evaluation team would be producing some cost benefit analysis findings ahead of the discussions with police to identify the future vision of the partnership; the in house BPP data analyst had also been able to draw some data. The findings were inclusive of a £292,825 saving across LAC for missing, of which £144,425 was directly related to BPP. In addition to this, BPP had made a direct saving to police of £71,253 in its reduction of calls for the service.

Members were informed that there were currently 26 young people in the Mockingbird model and since February 2018 the service had not encountered any breakdowns of stability within this cohort.

Members made the following comments:

·         It was pleasing to see that the project was working as episodes of missing from LAC (BPP homes) was improving.

·         Would be interesting to see information in relation to complaints and compliments from young people.

·         What do the authority do about children that were being neglected by foster carers?

·         Needed to look at the sustainability of the mockingbird model.

In response to Members comments it was reported that:

·         Children that went missing from care were offered return interviews; if a child declined a return interview then other means would be used to ascertain why they went missing.

·         Information on complaints and compliments from young people was tracked; outreach services did receive feedback from young people.

·         Fostering and how to improve the service was being looked at; the authority would want to know about any child that was being neglected; the authority did make regular visits to foster carers; not all fostering families were fell under the service.

·         The service was supporting Greater Manchester in rolling out this model, to prevent children going into care.

Resolved-

(1)       That the Committee welcomes the contents of the report and asks that officers provide information in a briefing note on the steps that are being taken to address the issues with the site that “Requires Improvement".

(2)       That the full academic review of the programme be presented to the Committee, as soon as the information is available.

Action:           Interim Strategic Director, Children’s Services