CYAD Improvement Support

Like many councils, we have seen our spend on support for children with disabilities grow rapidly in the last few years. We are seeking external support to help us:

• Develop our approach to care purchasing and market management
• Maximising health and education income
• Ensuring practice is sufficiently progression focused

This support needs to be a mix of putting the procedures and tools in place for us to manage long term along with practical 'doing' support, especially focused on provider negotiations. Requirements include the following:

• Care market management
  • Skilling up our Arranging Care team to start purchasing for children with disabilities
  • Developing procedures and tools to support the Arranging Care team
  • Developing approach, procedures, and tools to support contract management
  • Developing approach to reducing cost for existing high-cost placements
  • Delivery of work to negotiate with most expensive provision to try and reduce cost / ensure they are working in a progression-focused manner
  • To identify an approach to source specialist fostering capacity as an alternative to residential provision
• Maximising health and education income
  • Putting clear procedures in place to apply for health funding
  • Putting clear procedures in place to apply for education funding
  • Support to make the case to NWL ICB for better working with NHS
  • Delivery of work to make the case to the relevant ICBs for health funding for the most expensive provision where insufficient health funding has been agreed
  • Delivery of work to make the case to the education team for education funding for the most expensive provision where insufficient education funding has been agreed
• Progression focused practice
  • Review case files for most expensive provision and audit the strength of practice
  • Make recommendations as to how practice can be improved