Charities urge care commissioning changes

Procedures for delivering children’s care services are loaded in favour of local authority provision and are failing vulnerable Scottish youngsters, an alliance of third and private sector providers has claimed in a submission to MSPs.

The report, from the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition, calls for a more child-centred and outcomes-based approach as the squeeze on municipal funds is preventing councils from meeting a rising demand to help vulnerable young people.

The report argues that, when councils commission care, comparisons between a local authority’s in-house provision and the third sector are not like-for-like. ‘Currently, many of the costs included in determining the price of voluntary and independent sector provision, such as transportation and health services, are excluded from the cost of local authority provision,’ the report claims.

‘While prices quoted by third and independent sector providers account for the total costs involved, it is often the case that local authorities leave out embedded costs, including staff recruitment and accommodation,’ it adds. ‘A fair and true cost comparison of local authority, voluntary and independent sector provision must be introduced.’

The report says that more than 16,000 children are in council care, with the number rising annually while local authority funding is being cut.

It also identifies ‘a growing gap between policy guidance and practical implementation’, resulting in looked-after children being more likely than others to face exclusion from school, poor attainment, and imprisonment in adulthood.

The report calls for greater collaboration and information sharing between authorities and service providers, and says that the outcome for each vulnerable child, rather than cost considerations, should be the determining factor in decisions about commissioning: ‘There can be no compromise on quality,’ it says.

It also suggests more flexible ways of assessing the needs of vulnerable children, arguing that the current system is too narrowly focused on educational attainment at the expense of social factors, despite the emphasis placed on holistic assessments by the Scottish Government’s Curriculum for Excellence teaching framework.

‘A strategic and co-ordinated system of assessment must be developed so that looked-after children and young people receive the services matched to their need,’ the report says.

It argues for assessment teams to be widened to include experts from social work, education, health and mental health fields, and says youngsters need pathway plans even after they pass the school-leaving age.