Agenda item

To receive a report by the relevant Cabinet Committee Members and Corporate Director for Education and Young People’s Services to consider and endorse or make recommendations on a decision.

1.            The Corporate Director, Mr Leeson, introduced a report that outlined the proposals for future commissioning intentions, central to which was the alignment of approaches with Public Health to ensure the maximum utilisation of resources and integrated approaches to service delivery.

2.            Mr Leeson advised that a restructure of the Early Help and Preventative service had been undertaken to integrate teams at district level.  The second phase of reorganising the service, to produce better quality support for children and families with better outcomes, was to look at the range of commissioned services that were used to support those families.  There were over 100 different contracts in place to provide different kinds of support for families in their localities.  This report looked at the re-commissioning of many of those services and rationalising those to integrate with the models that were now delivered in each district. 

3.            The Director of Early Help and Preventative Services, Mrs Kroll, highlighted the four appendices to the report; (i) KCC strategic and supporting outcomes, (ii) Existing EHPS contracts, (iii) Diagnostic report and (iv) Procurement timeline. All of the work had been informed by the 2015 Commissioning Framework for KCC, delivering better outcomes through improved commissioning and aligned with the new structure of EHPS.  Mrs Kroll stated that underpinning all commissioning must be the outcomes for children and young people.  There also needed to be a consistent approach across Kent.  Mrs Kroll advised that all of the 100 contracts across Kent had been aligned to end at the same time.  The first phase to end by March 2016 and the second phase by October 2016. She explained that many of the contracts dealt with single issues instead of the whole family.  Many of the contracts had cumbersome pathways to access services causing delays and waiting lists due to a high level of bureaucratic processes before children could access services.  Work had been carried out to improve the specification to improve access to support services.  The work needed to complement EHPS as well as Specialist Children’s Services.

4.            Mrs KrolI gave an overview of the scope of the Commissioning Framework.  This included all the family work, the youth offer contracts, the Emotional Health and Wellbeing, to be aligned with the Public Health work regarding the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) specification.  The re-commissioning would be for a “family approach” that included the Troubled Families work, the Youth offer, Young Carers; and Emotional Health and Wellbeing.  This would also be aligned with the recommissioning in October 2016 of Health Visitors, School nursing, substance misuse and Emotional Health and Wellbeing.

5.            Mrs Kroll advised that there was a grant programme being developed to ensure that small local organisations had access to grants and promoted innovation and promoted local solutions.

6.            Mrs Kroll explained the timeline.  There were two phases; (i) the Youth Services and Young Carers and the grant programme which would be at the start of the procurement in October 2015.  The award would be made in January 2016 for the contract to start in April 2016 and (ii) the Emotional and Wellbeing would follow the same path as the first phase but with the contract starting in October 2016.

7.            Mr Leeson and Mrs Kroll received comments and responded to questions by Members as follows:

a)   Members welcomed the report.

b)  Mrs Kroll advised that Emotional Health and Wellbeing needed to be looked at in a different way to how it was looked at before.  The Young Healthy Minds contract had led to very lengthy waiting lists with a cumbersome way of accessing that service.  This meant that the problems could get worse and lead to referrals to the CAHMS service.  The aim was to build capacity in schools and youth hubs by training all staff on the importance of good early identification of emotional need.  The detail of that specification had not been fully formed. 

c)  The Cabinet Committee noted that the second contract dealing with community work would ensure the CAHMs services were delivered in family focused places where young people felt comfortable eg children centres or youth hubs. Mr Leeson advised that the recommissioning of KCC resources for Mental Health and Wellbeing was also being carried at the same time intentionally to align with the commissioning for the CAHMS contract.  The CAHMS contract was a large piece of work, especially with reducing the waiting times and putting the work of CAHMS into schools and children centres.

d)    Mrs Kroll had been working closely with the Strategic Commissioning Team to ensure that there were sound processes in place as part of the specification with robust contract monitoring systems. 

8.            RESOLVED that:-

(a)          the  comments and responses to questions by Members be noted; and

(b)          the Cabinet Committee endorsed the decision to be taken by Cabinet to proceed with the outlined commissioning intentions and to re-commission Early Help services in 2016.