Agenda item

Report from the Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children and Young People.

Councillor Lucy Smith, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children and Young People presented the report which outlined that project Skyline is a Greater Manchester wide proposal to create a supply of children’s homes to increase availability of looked after children placements in the Greater Manchester region for some of our most vulnerable young people. This will see ten new homes that can accommodate twenty four children with complex mental health issues or Emotional Behavioural Difficulties. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is leading the procurement on behalf of the ten Greater Manchester local authorities.

Decision:

Cabinet:

1. Approved in principle to enter into a Partnership Agreement for Project Skyline as referred to in this report.
2. Note a further report will return to Cabinet.

Reasons for the recommendation(s):

Formally entering the partnership with all 10 Greater Manchester authorities will enable Bury to participate in progressing plans to invest in new regional provision that will be protected for Greater Manchester children and seek to develop a portfolio of new publicly owned residential provision to support children in care to GM authorities in need of residential provision.

At its core, creating dedicated Greater Manchester Combined Authority provision will mitigate the exposure to market forces, particularly the escalating cost of provision and sometimes sub-optimal outcomes for children. The partnership agreement is to establish ten homes for twenty four children and young people. Whilst this is a small number relative to the number of children in care to Greater Manchester authorities in private sector children’s homes (slightly less than 600 currently), it represents an important shift and return to the children’s homes market for GM local authorities.

Bury is the only Local Authority in Greater Manchester that does not have internal residential homes, so we are the most challenged of all GM authorities in terms of sufficiency of specialist homes and our subsequent exposure to market forces, we have seen a marked increase in the number of residential placements currently at forty six having seen an increase in volume of 21% over the past 12 months ,with an weekly average cost of £5,834 per child at the end of Q1 2024/25 and with a total cost of £8.7m at 2023/24 outturn.

Risks arising from the partnership agreement are detailed in section 7.2 to 7.5 of the report and predominantly focus on the liability of individual local authorities for losses and the length of the agreement. It is important that these risks are understood, however they need to be viewed in the context of spiralling costs to councils from increasing use of private sector Children’s Homes. Viewed in this context the risks from participation in the partnership are outweighed by the need to change how this market is currently operating.

The agreement is for an initial 7-year period, with the option for 3 further years. Engagement in Project Skyline would be a complementary facet of Bury’s sufficiency strategy whilst we also develop plans for our own residential provision and build the number of fostering households and the range of needs that foster homes are able to meet.

Alternative options considered and rejected:

The two main alternatives to the proposal are to either do nothing and continue to solely purchase from the private sector market or to solely develop our own provision. As outlined above, the council is looking at both the Project Skyline and developing our own residential provision to reduce dependence on the private sector market for children’s homes, as it is increasingly costly and poses a threat to long[1]term council financial viability.

The council has already approved the development of its own residential provision is November 2024 and Project Skyline should be seen as complementary to the council’s own proposal, rather than either being an alternative to the other. Project Skyline provides 24 homes for children across GM and the council’s proposal provides for the development of 6 homes for children. These figures should be seen in the context of close to 600 children in private sector residential homes across GM and 46 children currently in the care of Bury. One can see that this is the beginning of a broader rebalancing of provision between public and private sector.

Furthermore, as part of the plans across GM, Project Skyline envisages developing specialist children’s homes for children vulnerable to extra-familial safeguarding risks and with acute mental health/behavioural concerns. This provision would differ from the type of homes that Bury itself would be seeking to establish.