Agenda item

CHILDREN'S CENTRE BUSINESS CASE 2014-2020

The Director for People will submit a report on options for the delivery of children’s centres, which offer an integrated community based service to all families with children from pre-birth to five year’s old.  The proposed business case groups the delivery of the service into six new clusters and all provision will be tendered including local authority delivered and schools’ delivered services, alongside existing contracted services.    

 

Background papers to this report can be accessed at the Council’s website Council and Democracy/Councillors and Committees/Library/Cabinet background papers or using the following hyperlink –

http://tinyurl.com/bdqgk2r

Minutes:

Carole Burgoyne (Director for People) submitted a report on options for the delivery of children’s centres, to provide an integrated community based service to all families with children from pre-birth to five year’s old.  The proposed business case grouped the delivery of the service into six new clusters and all provision would be tendered including local authority delivered and schools’ delivered services, alongside existing contracted services.   

 

Fiona Fleming (Strategic Commissioning Manager) and Jo Hall (Senior Adviser Early Years and Childcare) attended the meeting for this item.

 

Councillor Evans (Chair) also drew Members’ attention to the separate private report containing commercially sensitive financial details, referred to in minute 56 below.

 

Councillor Williams (Cabinet Member for Children and Young People) introduced the proposals and indicated that -  

 

a)

a clustering approach was proposed which would group the designated sites whilst maintaining delivery in all communities and  making the best use of a range of community settings. This would reduce the back office costs and burden of inspection that came with a single designated site whilst maximising investment in front line delivery; 

(b)

the proposal would provide greater opportunities to plan across health, principally midwifery and health visiting, and other Council services already providing information, advice and parenting support for families; 

(c)

 

there was a commitment from health commissioners to work with the Council to create an integrated early childhood service offer, building on existing joint commissioning intentions and outcome requirements. Further joint working with other partners such as Job Centre Plus, would be developed in line with the new model of delivery;

(d) 

this model of delivery would achieve a saving of £0.960m from the Early Years budget;

(e)

a wide ranging consultation had taken place with parents, Children Centre Advisory Groups, and other key stakeholders to inform the future configuration and service delivery.

(f)

a Summary Consultation Report, was submitted providing an overview of key themes that had emerged through this consultation, one of which was a proposal by the Advisory Board for Woodford and Plum Tree to combine these two centres, so that they could  be managed more effectively;

(g)

it was recommended that contracts would be awarded for three years with the option to extend for three years, to ensure the new service model had time to fully develop.

Jo Hall also reported on the consultation exercise.

 

Alternative options considered and reasons for the decision –

 

As set out in the report.

 

Agreed that –

 

(1)

the Council undertakes a tender for children’s centres provision in six new clusters, as set out on the attached map and in line with Option 1 set out in the report. This option will include all provision in the tender, including local authority delivered and schools’ delivered services alongside existing contracted services and contracts will be awarded for three years with the option to extend for three years;

(2)

Woodford and Plum Tree Children’s Centres in Plympton are combined, to enable more efficient management whilst keeping the two designated sites for delivery to achieve consistency for families; 

(3)

 

the designated site for Sweet Peas Children’s Centre is closed and replaced with an appropriate delivery site, due to significant running costs.

 

Supporting documents: