Issue - meetings
Gateway 5 Contract Management Report: Early Help Contracts
Meeting: 08/04/2014 - Cabinet (Item 18)
18 Gateway 5 Contract Management Report: Early Help 
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Additional documents:
Minutes:
Background:
This report provided details of a review of progress of eight of the current Early Help contracts. It was noted that the Council, in partnership with the Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), funded a number of organisations to deliver a range of early help services for children. The report provided detailed information on the proposals for each of the service providers as set out in paragraph 4 of the report.
The Procurement Board considered this report on 19 March 2014 and supported the recommendation set out in the report.
It was noted that Diversity Impact Assessments had been provided (appendices 1-8 of the report as set out in Supplementary Agenda no. 4). For those services that were being decommissioned, officers would work with providers to ensure that the risk to service users was minimised.
An exempt appendix contained finance and whole-life costings information for the contracts.
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Decision number: |
Decision: |
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82/2014 |
The Cabinet agreed the following: (i) Crisis Intervention 10 Decommission the service, giving a notice period of 3 months from April 2014. (ii) Place2Be Cease to subsidise the service offered to academies with effect from April 2014, and to reduce support to around 10% of the current level by April 2015. (iii) Low Level Grants (Relate Medway & North Kent, Medway Mediation and KASBAH) Decommission the services, giving a notice period of 4 months from April 2014. (iv) Home-Start Decommission, giving a notice period of 12 months from April 2014 andreduce the funding over the last 9 months of the contractual term by 14% in line with the savings requirements. Commission a new service to be in place by April 2015. (v) Medway Challengers Service Terminate current contract arrangements giving a notice period of 6 months from April 2014. Commission a new service which promotes emotional and mental health of Looked After Children (vi) New Directions Mentoring Decommission the service giving a notice period of 3 months from April 2014. |
Reasons:
Thecurrent funding arrangements have been based on grant allocation and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). As these services had been identified as on-going requirements they were required to be compliant with the Medway Council contract rules, public procurement rules, or state aid rules and therefore a competitive process carried out. This had not been the process in the past.
An Early Help Strategy has recently been produced which identified priorities for early help services, and all early help provision should be targeted on these areas of need.