Agenda item

To review in-year budgets for the Children and Families Service, including progress against agreed cost savings.  To note, additional data has been requested for corporate parenting budget.

5.1  Budget monitoring is a key function of overview and scrutiny and each year the Commission reviews the in-year budgets of the Children and Families Service.  The aim of this item is to:

·  Review in-year spending and cost pressures;

·  Management actions to reduce any projected overspends;

·  Progress in achieving identified cost savings for 2022/23.

5.2  This item is taken alongside the Children and Families Annual Report so that members can review budgets alongside policy priorities for the service. Additional data has been requested on the Corporate Parenting Budget given the ongoing cost pressures in this area of service.

Corporate Finance Overview

5.3  After the application of reserves, CFS was projecting an overspend of £1.7m for the year end 2021/22 at September 2022.  The most significant area of overspend was corporate parenting which was predicting an overspend of £1.3m after reserves.  Overspends of £0.3m and £0.2m were also projected for Commissioning and the Disabled Children's Service.

Questions from the Commission

5.4 Given that the increased use of in-house foster carers is a key priority (in that they provide better quality of care and are more cost effective than Independent Foster Agencies), the Commission notes that the budget for in-house foster carer team has not changed from 2021/22 to the current year - it has remained static at £2.4m.  In this context, does the current budget for the in-house foster carer team fully reflect the priority for this service given that the team now supports more placements (possible service dilution) and ambitions to extend support (i.e. Mockingbird)?

·  It was noted that there had not been a significant tail-off of in-house foster carers in Hackney as had been experienced in other boroughs during the pandemic, and numbers have been increasing since this time.  These foster carers needed the support of social workers and other staff to help them take on maintain placements of looked after children.  The service was looking at how the local offer could be further improved with additional support and staffing to ensure house foster carers got the help that they needed.

5.5 Given that there is an interrelation between in-house and IFA foster carer use, is this reflected in the way that these respective budgets are viewed (i.e. not siloes).  To what degree can projected budget underspend for IFA (of £760k) be used specifically off-set in-house foster carers budget?

·  Potentially, given how these budgets interrelate this is what will happen.  When budgets are set for 2023/24 finance and service officers will liaise and they will take this into account and will be reflected in budget allocations.  The service will set a budget which reflects the need to encourage more children to be supported via in-house foster carers team, and create budget pressures for IFA foster carer usage.

5.6  At page 25, the management action is to increase the number of young people claiming housing benefit? Can you explain further what this means? Does this refer to care leavers who are in receipt of supported housing, but encouraged to switch to independent housing?

·  This refers to children who are in supported accommodation but who are able to maintain an independent tenancy in their own right, and therefore qualify for housing benefit.  The cost to the council of providing supported accommodation is therefore reduced.  A dedicated worker supports young care leavers to apply through this transitional period.

·  There are a number of issues why not all care leavers might be claiming housing benefit as young people may have their claims stopped or have lapsed, not applying for the correct benefits in time, having issues with bank accounts, or refusing to claim.

5.7  The paper detailed a management action to reduce the number of high cost residential placements by 5 this year to reduce the projected overspend in this part of the corporate parenting budget.  How does the service intend to do this so that it will not generate equal cost pressures in other aspects of the corporate parenting budget?  Is there sufficient capacity to step children down?  What safeguards are in place to ensure that these decisions are genuinely taken in the best interests of the child?

·  The Head of Service regularly assesses all high cost placements as part of a weekly meeting.  This is not always about stepping children down from these residential placements, but also about challenging the costs of these provisions in relation to services provided and the needs of the children concerned.  That is, is a 3 to 1 ratio of support still required or can  2 to 1 ratio of support  be provided?  Costs might be appropriate at the time, but children’s needs vary and the service needs to reflect this in appropriate and cost effective commissioning.

·  In terms of forensic analysis, there is always a lessons learnt process about the commissioning of individual placements which may inform future commissioning arrangements.  The service was trying to bring together finance, performance and service information for more effective and cost efficient placement of children.

·  The Director had oversight of all such moves and whilst finance is a consideration it was not the only consideration as children’s needs were paramount.  The Director had confidence that such moves were taken in the best interests of the child.  Oversight was also provided by an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) to provide representation for children in care.

5.8  A significant underspend of £225k is projected for Clinical Services - which is equivalent to almost ? of the entire budget. Given that there was also a significant underspend in this service of £246k at the end of the last financial year 2021/22 - can officers explain the reasons why this budget has been consistently underspent - is this due to staff vacancies or additional unplanned income? If this is due to staff vacancies, what impact is this consistent underspend having on clinical service provision for local children and families?  What counter measures have been taken?

·  The main reason for the underspend was because of additional funding from health partners NLCGG to offset health costs within the service.  As in effect the whole of children’s services budgets are ring fenced, any underspends in one area of the service can be used to offset overspends in other areas of the service (and bottom line for CFS).  In the budget setting process for 2023/24, finance officers will sit down with services to understand demand and whether underspends are likely to occur in the forthcoming year.

5.9  At page 24, it is noted that the Early Help review was designed to reduce costs by £350k, but the report notes that these savings have not been fully achieved.  Can officers set out  how much savings have been achieved by the Early Help Review and what will need to be mitigated?

·  It was acknowledged that there had been a delay in delivering the early help savings for this year as this was still being worked through as to how these savings were going to be achieved on a recurrent basis.  The under delivery of this budget saving is factored into the forecast for the year end March 2023.

·  It was acknowledged that this was at present contributing to the overall overspend for the service, but finance officers were confident that this could be worked through.

5.10  In relation to semi-independent care, the Commission noted that there was a significant cost pressure of £1.5m for accommodating under 18’s and over 18’s.  Given that members noted that the quality of housing support and accommodation was variable from site visits this year, what was CFS doing to improve quality as well as reduce costs?

·  In relation to the quality of semi-independent housing, officers noted that Ofsted were bringing more settings into regulation to ensure that these complied with established standards.  The service was preparing for this regulation which comes into effect in April 2023, and to understand what impact that this would have on commissioning of housing support.  The CFS welcomes this regulation and is working with providers to support them through this process.  Every child that CFS places in semi-independent care is provided with appropriate care and support for that placement. 

·  Officers acknowledged that other solutions may be possible in the longer term, though these would involve significant commitments from the Council’s capital programme which would be challenging in the current financial context.  The council was having conversations with other boroughs about such possible joint ventures to help share investments and risks, but it was acknowledged more could be done.

5.11  From table 1 of the report, the Commission noted that there was no budget or spend allocation for Teaching Partnership and Contextual Safeguarding services. Can officers explain this?

·  The Teaching Partnership is funded by the Department of Education (DfE).  The Contextual Safeguarding Service was initially funded by DfE but this is now funded by the CFS.

5.12  Vacancy Rate Savings have been introduced across council departments to assist in stemming overall budget shortfalls in the General Fund.  At page 24, the report notes that there is a target of £900k saving for Children and Families - how much of this is forecast to be achieved and how much will need to be mitigated?  The Vacancy Rate savings represents a significant sum, has there been any assessment as to what impact that this has had on service provision, particularly as this includes a number of key posts (e.g. Leaving Care Welfare Benefits officer as spec on p25)?

·  Across the council a vacancy rate saving of 3.5% was set for each directorate to achieve in relation to staff turnover and recruitment. The rationale for this was that as staff leave non-front line aspects of the service, there is a lag in between staff leaving and replacement staff being appointed which generates a ‘saving’ in the budget.  This exercise has not been completed without challenge, but officers were confident that this target would be achieved.  There is no suggestion that this approach would cause delay to a post that was needed to be recruited to, and that this has been identified through natural churn within the recruitment system.  This would be continually monitored with service heads.

·  It was not unusual for LA’s to have a vacancy rate saving, with many adopting a higher percentage than 3.5%.  Officers did note however, that this vacancy rate saving applied to all staff groups, including frontline staff. The priority for CFS is to run a safe service and the need to find savings in this manner would not jeopardise that objective.  The service would not leave a statutory post open, therefore if a social work post fell vacant then the service would recruit immediately as these posts need to be filled all the time. For CFS the vacancy rate saving is mainly achieved through non-statutory posts.

5.14  The Chair thanked officers for attending and responding to members' questions.  The Chair reiterated the importance of budget monitoring as this helped to contextualise some of the decisions that officers are required to take about related policy issues. This item would continue to be taken in future years.  The Chair further noted that the Commission would hope that proposals for investment to save in respect of children’s social care placements for residential settings and semi-independent accommodation would be forthcoming in the future.