Children in Care Market Position Statement

As Corporate Parents we have high aspirations for our children. Our ambition for the children and young people in our care is the same as our ambition for all children and young people in Stockton-on-Tees - that they live in safe, secure, and loving environments and are happy and healthy.

There are some children and young people who need to live in other care arrangements, either in the short term or permanently. Our approach in Stockton-on-Tees is to, where possible, enable our children and young people to live with alternative nurturing and supportive families. If we are unable to provide a family setting or if this may not meet the child or young person's needs, we will seek to provide a children's home which replicates family life as closely as possible. We will enable our young people to live in supported accommodation, which includes supported lodgings, staying with their foster carers or group-based supported accommodation depending on their needs, to help them move towards independence. The Council believes that wherever possible the children in our care should live close to their communities to maintain contact with friends, family and the people that are important to their lives.

The care model for Stockton-on-Tees places a focus on working with families whilst children are in care, to support reunification as a permanence option. Our model offers intensive support, family group conferencing, parenting programmes and therapeutic approaches to birth families whilst children are in care, where it is in the best interest of the child, to support families to address any parenting capacity issues and understand their children's needs.

In Stockton-on-Tees we deliver a mixed model of in house internal residential children's homes, supported accommodation and fostering services alongside the commissioning of residential children's homes, supported accommodation and independent fostering agencies. We are looking to work in a collaborative way with providers who share our vision, values and aspirations for our children and young people.

From December 2024 we will be holding regular provider networks to develop relationships with, share information and practice with providers of care and support services. For more information, please contact gemma.mann@stockton.gov.uk.

We are committed to keeping children and young people with their families wherever it is safe to do so. Where a residential home is assessed as best meeting the needs of the child or young person, we are seeking for this to be within smaller homes of two to three bedrooms. We are not looking for any larger residential home provision to come into the local market.

We want to work with providers of children's residential homes in the Borough to develop a 'Stockton first' approach as, at times, we are placing children away from their local communities due to a lack of available places from provision rather than as a result of their needs. As at April 2024, 21 (42%) of the 50 placement capacity within externally delivered in-borough children's homes were for Stockton-on-Tees children.

It is challenging to find small or solo children's homes (both in and out of area) that can meet the needs of our children and young people with complex and multiple needs, particularly young teenagers with complex trauma, attachment, or mental health needs. We are carrying out work to determine the model of provision that will meet these needs.

There are limited options to support young people with disabilities who require residential provision at the age of 17 years. Short term placements are largely unavailable within the market and adult providers cannot legally accommodate the young person until they turn 18 years of age. We will be carrying out targeted engagement with the market to explore how we can deliver well planned, supported transitions for young people.

We need more carers across all aspects of our family-based foster placements. This includes short breaks, all age groups, sibling groups, respite and parent and child placements.

We have more foster carers leaving the profession than we have new foster carers registering, and a shortfall in sufficiency across all fostering provision including independent fostering agencies. This means that, at times, children whose needs would be best met through fostering are placed in residential children's homes, increasing sufficiency pressures.

We need to increase the diversity of representation within our foster carers to meet the cultural needs of children and young people.

We have developed bespoke materials to increase awareness of our fostering offer and are working as part of the Foster with North East Hub to increase the number of foster carers in the local area.

We are part of regional commissioning frameworks for independent fostering agencies and through this are working to ensure that we have a wide range of providers that can meet the needs of our children and young people.

We want to work with providers in the Borough to develop a 'Stockton first' approach with supported accommodation provision, as at times young people are remaining in residential care for longer than they need to or being placed out of area to meet their needs. As of April 2024, there were 12 group based supported accommodation places which had young people from other local authority areas living in them.

There has been an increase in the number of young people aged 16 years and over in our care over recent years. The profile of need for our young people aged 16 years and over has also changed, in part due to the national transfer scheme increasing the proportion of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children brought into the care of the authority. In addition, we have seen an increase in the number of young people who are ready to move on to supported accommodation but whose needs require high levels of support. We will be carrying out market engagement over the coming months to explore innovative solutions for young people with more complex needs that will develop and sustain their capacity to live independently.

When our young people are ready to move to independence, it can be challenging for them to find affordable accommodation. This can lead to our young people remaining in supported accommodation or living in unsuitable accommodation for longer than they need to. The proportion of our care leavers aged 19 years and over in suitable accommodation dropped to 84% in 2022-23 and is now lower than statistical neighbours and England averages. We are working in partnership with our Strategic Housing team to engage with private and social landlords to expand the range of affordable move-on options for our care leavers.

We are working to increase the number of supported lodgings providers across all areas of the Borough as our evidence of impact shows that young people in these settings achieve positive outcomes. We currently have young people in other forms of supported accommodation whose needs could be better met in a supported lodgings environment. We have developed bespoke materials to increase awareness of our supported lodgings offer and are actively recruiting new providers.

We are working to increase our staying put arrangements, so that when it is right for the foster carer and young person, the young person can stay with their foster carer when they turn 18 years of age.