CUMBRIA YOUNG PERSONS ACCOMMODATION AND SUPPORT STRATEGY
Partners:
District Housing Authorities
Supporting People
Children’s Services – including
Focus on Children in Need
Children Leaving Care
Youth Offenders
2008 - 2010
Awaiting full authorisation from All District Councils, Committees and Cumbria Housing Group.
CONTENTS
3 / Executive summary4 / Background
9 / What the Demand and Supply data tells us
22 / Issues affecting patterns of commissioning
27 / Review of Local and County priorities for action and recommendations
31 / Commissioning recommendations for 2008
32 / Appendix 1.
Prevention Framework Specification 4
34 / Appendix 2.
Tables on Homelessness 2006 onwards
36 / Appendix 3. Supporting People Tables.
39 / Appendix 4.
Report on care leaver’s accommodation and support needs.
44 / Appendix 5.
Section 20 Panel.
45 / Appendix 6
Housing priorities: Cumbria housing group 2007
46 / Appendix 7
Working document County joint Implementation plan:
June 2008
58 / Appendix 8
DFCSF and Communities and local government practice guidance on joint working between Housing and Children’s Services
116 / Appendix 9 – Draft Proposal June 2008
Measuring performance and progress
Executive Summary
This report outlines the background to the commissioning of accommodation and support services primarily for 16- 19 year olds in Cumbria. It illustrates trends, activity and shortfalls in the demand and supply of accommodation and support for young people. Together with emerging ‘’move on’’ strategy, it is the first step in commissioning a coherent Cumbria young persons’ accommodation and support jointly commissioned plan.The report includes a mutually agreed implementation plan (appendix7)based on recommendations.
‘Supporting People’ have had a lead role in planning, commissioning and contract management of accommodation and social support services. Young people are one of several marginalised groups who have benefited from investment and services developed via Supporting People to date. They are one of the smallest groups of vulnerable people and need a specific focus to prevent further vulnerability in adult life and give them a good chance of becoming a positive future generation of parents and citizens.
The report shows in extensive detail the Supporting People 2008 needs analysis, referral and contracts data, plus the finance resource allocation for young people aged 16-24, and also teenage parents. They have a performance indicator relating to the number of people who have ‘moved on’ (KP2)in a planned way as an outcome from the commissioned services.
District housing authorities have a statutory priority commitment to ‘homeless’ young people aged 16/17. years. They have a target of ‘no young people aged 16/17 years in bed and breakfast accommodation by 2010’ . The main elements of the youth homelessness strategy that each individual district is expected to plan and implement that relates to young people has been agreed with partners in the development of this strategy.
The Children’s Services 2007 analysis of accommodation and support needs for care leavers mainly 16-19 years is outlined. This is a statutory priority for Children’s Services. Lack of suitable and stable accommodation is often an obstacle to successful maintenance of education, training and employment. All care leavers aged 19 must be in suitable accommodation. No care leavers should be discharged from care into bed and breakfast or unsuitable accommodation.
‘Care Matters’ includes the group of Vulnerable young people on the edge of care aged 16 plus. They often expect to leave difficult home circumstances at this early age. Some disabled youngsters who will need 24 hour care in their adult life aged 16/17 currently have to go into adult accommodation or leave the county due to lack of provision. Some young people who offend aged 16/17 are in unsuitable accommodation or have insufficient support and this affects their re-offending after periods in custody. These are all ‘children in need’ of extra support and preparation for adult life for whom the Children’s Trust Board and the current development of commissioning of Integrated Youth Support Services have a responsibility and a commitment to implement the new May 2008 national practice guidance on joint working. (Appendix 8).
.Analysis of the supply of supported accommodation of different types against demand by 16-24 year olds for Preventative Strategy
1.Background
1.1 This analysis has been commissioned by the Cumbria Children’s Trust to promote the life chances of young people. It aims to ensure vulnerable young people at risk of coming into, and unnecessarily staying in, care system placements experience improved access and availability of suitable accommodation and support. The priority of ‘housing 16’ plus has been one of 7 priorities of the board established in summer 2007.
(See Appendix 1. Preventative Framework specification 4)
1.2 The needs assessment, prioritisation and planning patterns of services so as to promote preventative services for Young People and adults has been completed in partnership with the Supporting People commissioning approach. This operates to the same financial local authority timescales as Children’s Services. It is focused on commissioning expected accommodation and support for all groups of vulnerable people where local authorities (Children’s or Adult Services) do not have a very clear mandatory statutory duty to provide them. Supporting People finance may be available as stand-alone post-18 finance or available in partnership with the statutory commissioning body for 16 to 18 year old children in need and care leavers
1.3 This joint analysis has also been completed in partnership with the community housing strategies and the 6 local district councils. The districts have provided data about homelessness for young people and share a common concern to the implement the government’s requirement that by 2010 there should no young people aged 16 and 17 using bed and breakfast. It is currently used as the only form of direct access or crisis accommodation that exists when the homeless hostels are full or unsuitable .
1.4 There is a long history of district councils working with Supporting People and Adult Services commissioning processes so there is both an annual and longer-term strategic system in place for analysing need and commissioning services. Children’s Services in Cumbria has become more of a full participating partner since the prioritisation of ‘housing 16 plus’ until relatively recently, however the annual planning cycle of the council applies to all.
1.5 Each partner organisation have individual performance indicators and targets. These need synchronising into joint targets for local area agreements for 2009 so that there are not perverse or contradictory incentives for organisations to categorise or count young people and their outcomes differently. These have yet to be developed, however existing targets include the following areas:
Children’s services performance indicators
· Increase and maintain a high % of Care leavers in suitable accommodation at their 19th birthday (A4) Consistent Performance at 98% - 100%. This indicator lacks useful definitions.
· Young Offenders PSA 23. 46 Young offenders access to suitable accommodation MoJ DSO
Children
YOS performance Data for 1st Jan 2007 - 31 Dec 2007•Of 658 cases, 24 were deemed not to be in suitable accommodation at the end of their Supervised YOS
Order (20 cases)/ or Release from Custody(4 cases)
• This involved 21 separate young people: 15 young men and 6 young women
•The ages range from 14-18
• The performance (no yp IN suitable acc'm / no cases ending) =
County = 95%: West =97.4% North = 95.3% South = 96.3%
Housing performance indicators
· No homeless 16/17 year olds in bed and breakfast by 2010
1/4/07 – 31.3.08 / Carlisle / Eden / Allerdale / Copeland / South Lakes / BarrowNumbers of times B&B used 16/17 year olds / 3 / 1 / 19 / 7 / 2 / 31
· Up to the end of March 2008 Carlisle had the following target
Increase the percentage of resolved cases from the multi-agency housing panel for young people (16-24) presented as homeless or “at risk of becoming homeless”
Performance:
Baseline 2006/7 60%.
2007/8 65%
Local Economy
156 Number of households living in temporary Accommodation
PSA 20
Supporting People performance indicators and contract monitoring information
KP2 Increase the number of Service users who have moved on in a
planned way from temporary housing arrangements.
KP12 (a) Number of day’s users supported to move on in planned way
(b) Individuals or families who have become homeless and never in a planned way.
KP12 Number of young people leaving care or otherwise or not supported to move on in planned way
2008 National guidance (appendix 4 of appendix 8) extract below demonstrates that all partners to this strategy will have progress and performance assessed as follows
The New Performance Framework for local authorities and local authority partnerships
In October 2006, Communities and Local Government published the White Paper Strong and Prosperous Communities, which focused on improving local authority services..
Set out in the White Paper is a new local performance framework which represents the most powerful driver yet for improved collaboration across public services because the outcomes and indicators are owned by local authorities and local strategic partnerships rather than by single local authority departments.
The Performance Framework is underpinned by the 198 performance indicators which make up the National Indicator Set. County and unitary local authorities have a statutory duty to prepare a Local Area Agreement (LAA) for their local area under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act (2007).
An LAA is a set of targets agreed between central government and a local authority and its partners about the priorities for the local area. LAAs are the delivery plan for the long term shared vision and priorities of the Sustainable Community Strategy, which is intended to promote the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of local communities. The vision and priorities should be based on evidence, including consultation with communities, businesses, partners and the voluntary and community sector that tells the ‘story’ of the area.
Under the new performance framework the local authority and its partner agencies will agree with Central Government (via the Government Office) the national indicators that are most appropriate for assessing the agreed priorities. Up to 35 of the national indicators can have targets set against them in the LAA. Where there are local priorities that are not assessed by the 35 targets, additional local targets can be set, but these are not monitored
by government. Local partners will then be assessed against how they perform for each of the LAA targets they have signed up to help deliver.
62 Joint working between Housing and Children’s Services
From April 2009, Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) will replace the
comprehensive performance assessment..
The Local Government White Paper said that the new Comprehensive Area Assessment will have four key elements:
1. performance against the set of 198 national and local indicators
2. an annual scored Use of Resources judgement for local public sector bodies, that is each local authority, PCT, police authority and fire & rescue authority, drawn from the annual audit
3. an annual scored Direction of Travel judgement for each local authority which assesses the effectiveness of each local authority in driving continuous improvement
4. an annual risk assessment which identifies the key risks to outcomes or delivery for each area – carried out by all public service inspectorates to ensure a balanced coverage across an area drawing on detailed knowledge of all the individual public service partners in a Local Strategic Partnership – will identify the key risks to outcomes or delivery for each area, reflecting on the robustness of local systems, relationships and external factors and consideration of the effectiveness of action being taken in an area
to deliver a judgement on the assessment of those risks and how well they are being managed.
Example indicators
Key to Public Service Agreements
PSA 14 Increase the number of children and young people on the path to success
PSA 16 Increase the proportion of socially excluded adults in settled accommodation and employment, education or training
PSA 17 Tackle poverty and promote greater independence and well-being in later life
PSA 20 Increase long term housing supply and affordability
1.6 Previous Supporting People analysis used in commissioning since 2004
The commentary outlined in this section is extracted from Supporting People reports by their team to contribute to the joint preventative strategy for Children’s Services. It
Peter Fletcher Research for Cumbria Supporting People conducted in 2004 first identified unmet need in relation to young people in Cumbria. It states that need outstrips supply for all socially excluded groups resulting in the Five Year Strategy prioritising the following groups:
· Young People (including care leavers and teenage pregnancies)
· Substance Misuse (covering both drugs and alcohol)
· Domestic Violence
· Offenders (including young offenders)
The research in Cumbria found due to lower incomes and unemployment, many young people had severe problems with finding affordable accommodation. Restrictions in levels on Income Support and Housing Benefit for under 25 year-olds and lack of entitlement to Income Support for most 16 and 17 year-olds contributed to increased homelessness amongst young people. There was a lack of accommodation and support for young people across Cumbria and local Registered Social Landlords (RSL) are reluctant to house 16/17 year olds mainly because of the management implications.
District Councils’ homeless sections faced great difficulty in finding provision for their homeless cases. Young homeless people had difficulties in finding suitable hostel accommodation as some would not accept 16 or 17 year olds and the existing hostel provision for single men in the county is not usually appropriate for homeless young people. Unfortunately it had to be used.
Care leavers face particular difficulties with finding somewhere to live; homelessness and sustaining independent living remain significant problems. Services that meet the needs of vulnerable 16 or 17 year olds who may become homeless will be very similar to those required by care leavers.
Since then
A significant drop has been recorded since 2004/05 of the number of individuals or homeless families moving on in a planned way. Low move on performance is also recorded for substance mis-users, ex-offenders and young people. To address this the Cumbria Housing and move on Strategy is under development. It seeks to identify barriers and solutions to improve the way in which vulnerable people are moving through supported accommodation.