Alternative Residential Children’s Care Services in Flintshire.

Descriptions

This notice at this stage is to purely gather market intelligence for the requirement detailed below. There is no guarantee that any competitive exercise will follow this request.Flintshire County Council’s Children’s Service is committed to safely reducing the number of looked after children who are currently placed out-of-area and wishes to look in detail at the way in which the local authority can work directly with an independent sector provider to establish new provision of care within Flintshire.Flintshire is entering into a partnership arrangement with a local housing provider (RSL) has secured the provision of two four bedroomed detached houses within the Authority.The model being developed does not address the specific needs of children with disabilities, however the children placed in the service are likely to have been exposed to a range of negative experiences, the trauma of these experiences may be expressed in a variety of ways; commonly children may be developmentally delayed or they may exhibit undesired behaviours that express their feelings and confusion.Flintshire wishes to expanding local residential care in partnership with the Independent sector and the housing provider and as such is keen investigate the feasibility of establishing a new, local authority commissioned independent sector -run children’s home provision. This approach may increase the control that the local authority had over the nature and quality of provision and link it in with other agencies and programmes of support. The new RISCA legislation provides potential opportunities for new service models but the detail needs to be fully explored and understood.To meet these aims, there are a number of service objectives. These are:1) To meet each child’s needs by working with them to identify and achieve a range of personal goals, as recorded in the child’s Care and Support Plan.2) To respect confidentiality and promote trusting professional relationships with children in doing so, to help children to participate in the planning and the development of their own support.3) To help reduce the need for admissions to higher levels of care and to promote opportunities for safe step down from care settings by supporting the children to develop positive skills and self-confidence.4) To work in partnership with all stakeholders involved in children’s services, in order to support children with complex problems via positive risk taking.5) To promote equal opportunities for children with complex problems to overcome discrimination and exclusion from society.