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Surrey County Council Commissioning sufficiency strategies

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Surrey County Council's primary purpose is to ensure children and young people are seen and heard, feel safe and can grow, and everyone benefits from education. Our aim in producing Sufficiency Strategies for both children and young people with additional needs and disabilities and those looked after is to enable the system of support to realise better outcomes .

We will do this by:

  • Setting-out some of the key things we know about children and young people with additional needs and disabilities and looked after children and care leavers in Surrey, including how many there are and how this might change over time, and what their particular needs might be;
  • Explore what provision we have available in Surrey and elsewhere to meet these needs, the quality of that provision and how much it costs;
  • Understand the connection between our practice and demand within the system; and
  • Identify key issues, priorities and intentions for our commissioning

A full list of Surrey County Council's Commissioning Sufficiency Strategies, with annual plan updates, can be found in the table below:

YearPurpose Full document Summary Document
2020 to 2025 Full Looked After Children (LAC) Sufficiency Strategy 2020 to 2025 Sufficiency Strategy (PDF)Executive summary (PDF)
2021 to 2022 Annual Sufficiency Plan Update to update on progress against full Sufficiency Strategy 2021 to 2022 Sufficiency Plan Update (PDF)2021 to 2022 Executive Summary (PDF)
2022 to 2023Annual Sufficiency Plan Update to update on progress against full Sufficiency Strategy (2022 to 2023)2022 to 2023 Sufficiency Plan Update (PDF)Not Applicable
YearPurpose Full Document
2022 to 2030 Full sufficiency strategy for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities 2022 to 2030 children and young people with additional needs and disabilities sufficiency strategy (PDF)

Sufficiency really means having enough of the right accommodation and services, in the right places, to effectively support Surrey's children, young people and families. This also includes thinking about the quality of those services and whether or not they are making a positive difference to the lives of children, young people and families. We often call these positive differences "outcomes".

Producing our sufficiency strategy has helped us to better understand:

  • the numbers of looked after children and care leavers in Surrey, the needs they have and how this might change over time;
  • the numbers of children and young people with additional needs and disabilities (either with an education, health and care plan or on Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support), and how this may change over time;
  • the provision we have available to respond to these needs and how this might need to develop in the future; and therefore
  • the key things we need to focus on together over the next five years and beyond.

Purpose

Surrey County Council is legally required to consider sufficiency and the term is defined in the Children Act 89 - the primary legislation in which all children's services operate. The act requires all local authorities to take steps that secure, as far as reasonably practicable, enough accommodation within the authority's area that meets the needs of children that the local authority is looking after.

These responsibilities were further strengthened in the 2004 Act, as follows:

  • "Each local authority has a duty, under section 10 of the Children Act (2004) to decide to promote co-operation with its relevant partners with a view to improving the wellbeing of children in the authority's area."

Aside from being a statutory duty however, we also know that working to secure the right amount of appropriate provision, in the right places and at the right time, makes a massive difference to Surrey's children and young people, and is a key part of how we can enable them to achieve better outcomes.

Our current context

Looked after sufficiency

In Surrey, at the time of developing our sufficiency strategy (31 March 2020) there were:

  • 2,106 children with active Child in Need plans
  • 694 children with an active Child Protection plan
  • 985 Looked after Children
  • 656 Care Leavers with active Pathway Plans

As of 31/03/2021, at the time of developing our annual update:

  • 2097 children with active Child in Need plans
  • 904 children with an active Child Protection Plan
  • 996 Looked After Children (LAC)

Whilst there is relatively wide-range of possible scenarios, the middle trend over five years would mean numbers of looked after children in Surrey increasing by around 185 – but this does not reflect the impact we might have by changing practice and provision. This in turn would mean numbers of care leavers are also likely to increase in due course

Children and young people with additional needs and disabilities

In Surrey, at the time of developing our sufficiency strategy (31/03/2022) there were:

  • 12,015 Education, Health and Care Plans
  • 27,241 on Special Educational Needs Support (SEN Support)
  • 196,697 pupils aged 5 to 16 attending a Surrey School

Future EHCP growth is currently forecast to reach a peak in 2026 to 2027 and 2027 to 2028, before reducing slightly thereafter.

Our vision for looked after children provision in Surrey

In Surrey County Council, we want to:

  1. Ensure children in care live in family homes where possible. This means;
    • Always enable children looked after to live with extended family or kinship members when possible.
    • Consider foster care as a first option of choice for all
  2. Create more Surrey Homes for Surrey Children. This means;
    • A strong focus on recruiting more in-house foster carers and residential workers, investing strongly in their support and training
    • Continue our capital investment across our residential estate moving towards a model of smaller 'ordinary homes'.
    • Focus on increasing the numbers of our looked after children who are able to live within the county and close to their communities.
  3. Ensure homes are of the highest quality. This means;
    • We recognise that residential care may be a positive choice for some young people
    • We extend our placement options by implementing a robust placement sufficiency strategy
    • We seek to minimise the number of placement moves children may experience, especially those which are unplanned.
  4. Ensure there are a wide range of placements for diverse needs. This means;
    • We strive to place our children with providers rated independently as 'good' or better and minimise the use of unregulated provision.
    • We monitor data and information about our placements at both operational and strategic levels.
    • We commission all placements so that our expectations of placements are absolutely clear – each child will have a placement plan which we will review as part of the statutory review process
  5. Support moves to independence. This means;
    • we expect foster carers and residential homes to provide opportunities for young people to develop independent living skills appropriate to their age and stage.
    • We provide the offer of 'staying put', to young people 18 to 21yrs old living with foster carers subject to their wishes.
    • Ensuring Surrey's children's homes are able to be supportive of young people leaving their care to 'stay close'.
    • We work with district and borough councils; registered social housing providers and third sector organisations to commission and provide a range of supported, semi-independent accommodation and permanent housing options for our care leavers.'

Our vision for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities provision in Surrey

Whilst Surrey County Council's primary purpose is to ensure children and young people are seen and heard, feel safe and can grow, and everyone benefits from education, SCC also wishes to ensure:

  1. Children and young people are at the centre of our thinking, and we work with families as partners in meeting their children's needs and planning how we will deliver support and provision in the future.
  2. All places, settings and organisations that provide education and/or support to children and their families are welcoming of Children and young people with additional needs and disabilities
  3. Ensure that when new provision and support is created, that Health, Education, and the Local Authority share responsibility to ensure that high quality support is in place for children and families when and where they need it.
  4. Children and young people with additional needs and disabilities can access the help and support they need to thrive and achieve within their local communities. They can go to education provision that meets their needs, access services and play an active role in the community close to where they live.
  5. Families have easy access to information which helps them understand how best to meet their child's needs and access the help that is offered.
  6. Children and families have access to the same level of high-quality support wherever they live in Surrey. We have a good, shared understanding of our children with additional needs and disabilities in Surrey and our support offer matches their needs.

Our 2021 to 2022 Sufficiency Plan update

As Surrey County Council implements the full Sufficiency Strategy, Children's Services are committed to ensuring the progress against the strategy is regularly reviewed and updated. As such, we are publishing an update, the 2021 to 2022 Sufficiency Plan Update (PDF), to be read alongside the full 2020 to 2025 Sufficiency Strategy (PDF). A full summary of the 2021 to 2022 Sufficiency Plan update (PDF) is also available.

Since the publication of the Sufficiency Strategy:

  • Surrey County Council has completed its re-commissioning of Supported Accommodation, and is now a member of the Commissioning Alliance. The impact of this re-commission is an additional 120 beds within county from 1 April 2022, the implementation of a new e-brokerage system for placements and a supplementary quality accreditation scheme for Supported Accommodation, so we can ensure that all young people in care have access to high quality placements within the county. 63% of young people in Supported Accommodation are now supported within 20 miles of home or within Surrey. This is up from 43% in March 2020.
  • An in-house children home development programme obtained cabinet approval. This will transform Surrey County Council Children's Homes by addressing vulnerabilities in the current staffing structure and management capacity, strengthening the specialised purpose for each home and developing a new provision for children with autism experiencing crisis.
  • No Wrong Door (NWD) has been implemented in Surrey. It is hoped the model will be effective at reducing care episodes, improving outcomes for service users and strengthening edge of care support.
  • 3 new external Residential Children's Homes have opened within Surrey borders, with a further 2 in development. Surrey County Council continues to encourage provision within the county, working in partnership with providers to strengthen pathways to independence and transitions to family settings (such as fostering).
  • A full in-house fostering service review completed, with recommendations implemented from April 2022. This includes development of the fostering website and development of a placement stability function. Surrey County Council is committed to providing more family settings through fostering in line with the vision of "family settings first".

Surrey County Council will continue to publish annual updates, to reflect changes to progress made over the next year.

What are we already doing to support looked after children (LAC) in Surrey?

To support increases in demand, Surrey County Council have already started to make key changes to service provision and the way we commission.

  • We're reviewing the amount of in-house council provision for children's residential and supported accommodation, so that every child in care feels safe, confident and able to achieve their outcomes
  • We're strengthening edge of care support and contextual safeguarding services through the Family Resilience Model and No Wrong Door
  • We're engaging with looked after children (LAC) to develop provision that best suits their needs.

What do we need to do?

To ensure all our children in care achieve the best possible outcomes in Surrey, we need to:

  • Improve the amount of provision (supported accommodation, including houses of multiple occupancy, residential and independent fostering agency) available in county.
  • Develop Surrey Homes for Surrey Children by strengthening high quality fostering capacity in Surrey, including in-house provision, and through the capital investment programme moving towards a model of smaller 'ordinary homes' accessible across the county.
  • Ensure all children in care are placed in homes of the highest quality – this means striving to use providers rated good or higher in all areas.
  • Develop services informed by the experiences of our children in care, and care leavers. We need to further develop the ways in which we consult and engage with young people about placements and support services, so developed provision meets their needs and takes account of their views
  • Maximise the use of current frameworks when commissioning placements to reduce the number of off-framework placements
  • Improve the proportion of children in care placed within Surrey by developing more local fostering capacity, including in-house, as well as exploring the case for in-house residential and supported accommodation.

Contact us

If you think you could work with Surrey County Council to meet our aims and ambitions for children in care, then we would love to hear from you. Please contact us at cflc.commissioningteam@surreycc.gov.uk.

Our frameworks – provide services for Surrey County Council

Surrey County Council has several different frameworks that providers of services – ranging from social care provision, to SEND provision – can join to provide services to Surrey residents.

If you've read our sufficiency vision and plan for looked after children (LAC), and think you can help improve outcomes for our children and young people, then we'd like to hear from you. Please apply via one of the following links below:

Files available to download

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