Provision of the overnight respite element of the Adolescent Resource Centre

Descriptions

Market sounding questionnaire for potential providers of the overnight respite element of the Adolescent Resource Centre Provision.BackgroundCardiff Children’s Services believe that there are unique advantages for children and young people growing up within their own families.There is currently a cohort of young people in their teenage years for whom the risk of family breakdown is high. In the likely event that these young people become Looked After, our experience tells us that they are more likely to require specialist fostering or residential placements in order to safely manage the entrenched challenging behaviour that many of these young people display within the home environment. There is limited availability of such placements locally and consequently, these young people are more likely to be placed at a distance from Cardiff, in external placements. These placements place huge financial costs on the Local Authority, not to mention the emotional costs to these young people of being placed away from family and friends and their local community.The development of an Adolescent Resource Centre (ARC) is a response to this need. It is expected to provide a more cost-effective solution that will achieve better outcomes for young people and their families.In summary, the ARC will provide intensive support for young people aged 11 - 17 years at risk of becoming Looked After, who present such challenges that they would otherwise be placed in costly external agency placements. A feature of this service is integrated support from a range of Local Authority partners such as the Youth Service, Youth Offending Service, Education and Housing. There will also be close working relationships with Health.The aims of this service will be to:· Reduce the number of young people being accommodated, and support them and their families to enable them to remain at home.· Reduce the number of adolescents in children’s homes, by providing support to young people and their Foster Carers to remain in their placements.The service will include outreach work and provide opportunities for family support both centre-based and in their own homes - including weekends and evenings, so that it is responsive to the changing need of the families receiving the service.The service will also offer out of hours support to in-house foster carers who offer placements to young people who fall within the ARC’s remit.Overnight RespiteAdditionally, the ARC will provide a number of Carers who will offer some parenting support both in the centre and in the family home and will provide overnight stays so that the young person who is the subject of the intervention can receive a pattern of planned respite away from their family as part of the support package offered by the ARC.Arguably, this is the element of the service that makes it distinctly different from other family support services that are currently available. We envisage operating this element of the service using approved Foster Carers who will receive specific training and support to enable them to operate within the ARC model of practice. It is Children’s Services intention to externally commission this respite element of the service which will be similar to the provision of Support Care. However, importantly, for young person accessing the service who are living at home, their parents / carers retain overall responsibility for them.Most crucially, those young people living at home with their parents will not fall into the category of being ‘Looked After’ when receiving the over-night stays. Consequently, it will be distinctly different from Support Care which by definition is short term preventative foster care aimed at providing meaningful practical help to families in crisis with a view to preventing family breakdown. The objective is to avoid children and young people becoming Looked After on a long term basis but they are viewed as being Looked After when accessing the Support Care arrangement.The market sounding questionnaire's can be found at the following links;English – https://surveys.cardiff.gov.uk/wh/s.asp?k=145045210663Welsh – https://surveys.cardiff.gov.uk/wh/s.asp?k=145045212696NOTE: To register your interest in this notice and obtain any additional information please visit the Sell2Wales Web Site at http://www.sell2wales.gov.uk/Search/Search_Switch.aspx?ID=38830.