Agenda item

Update report enclosed.

The Scrutiny Members received a report and presentation from Rachel Beatty, Commissioning Manager.

The current contract arrangements remain in place until 2018 and important to note that work carries on with children and young people across the city under the existing BYL contract.  The intention of coming to Scrutiny was to ensure that conversations were had in advance to enable as many stakeholders to feed into the future development of the service which will need to support vulnerable young people whilst balancing the need to reduce resources absorbing a possible reduction of £900k to £1.7 million in funding.

The statutory requirements the contract fulfils are around ensuring young people are in education, employment and training, and that they have access to positive activities which are advertised online via Rife and Go places to Play.

Actions of the Officers to date - an analysis of need; developing an equalities impact assessment; mapping provision across the city; engaging with providers and the youth sector to start to develop a commissioning strategy which will be formally consulted upon in January to March 2017;  Development of a young commissioner's project which will be delivered in partnership with the children and young people’s voice network .

Emerging model, some principles:

·        Adopt principles of 3 tier model – help to help yourselves, help when you need it

·        Work in a whole family way, and link work more closely with Early help and other work of VCS

·        Model currently considering is 3 areas to match Early help, and continue with specialist and online services.

·        Encourage a broader range of organisations in the city, and especially those organisations who can show they can engage well with their local community.  Considering a model in which consortiums are compulsory, with partnerships needing to be meaningful and working together to meet the needs of their local population of CYP.

·        Retain resource within the council to help support youth sector organisations to sustain, work together and work collaboratively on emerging needs.

During consultation expectations will be managed to ensure that those contributing are aware of how funding restrictions would in future impact on the service. The process would remain open and transparent.  Learning from the former commissioning process, any communication plan would be outward facing, ensuring service users were aware of the final strategy and service model.  With careful consideration given to balancing the needs of staff to be made aware of changes in their roles and TUPE obligations.

Timeline shared:

Members made a number of early comments to feed into the process, as follows.

a.      Members supported the need to include key performance indicators and measureable outcomes as part of the service level agreement, in the final contract awarded.  That those KPI’s cover areas such as service impact on the Mental & Physical Health of young people.  Members noted a discernible lack of substantial outcomes from the current service providers.  Officers assured members that this had been taken on board and any service level agreement would include measureable performance indicators and early assessment on how any work impacted on service users.  Also acknowledged that it is more difficult to measure things when you are commissioning a preventative service.

b.      Members were informed of the intention for future commissioned services to be procured collaboratively with organisations in consortium, to encourage local community providers to be able to bid for contracts. 

c.      Members asked how the service links to the 3 tier model.  Officers stated the online provision supports the three tier model, as young people are able to help themselves, the younger generation often turn to online medium for guidance in the first instance.  Young people may need to access some of the specialist services to gain access to 1:1 support for ‘help when they need it’.  Important to realise that this set of services is applicable to all levels of need. So even if a young person is on the edge of care, they should still be able to access provision at all three tiers of the 3 tier model.

d.      Members asked if there is a seasonal impact on the youth service. Officers stated the engagement rate remained constant throughout the year but reflected the change in service provision during the summer months when many more play schemes were in operation and open access events took place in outside play areas.  The 1-1 support to young people is a constant offering throughout the year.

e.      Members asked how the youth service supported young offenders and the impact on minimising repeat offenders, this was a question for the Youth Offending team.  Action: Rachel Beatty to contact the team for statistical information.

f.       Members asked about the up take in service.  Of the 54,000 young people in Bristol what percentage access the service 20% of young people in Bristol access Bristol Youth Links Services in 2014-15.

g.      Members were not convinced that offsetting targets to establish a balanced view in a report, where some areas met targets at the expense of those that did not was the right way forward.  Officers took this feedback on board.

h.      Members commented on the (current) distribution of youth service over the 3 areas of Bristol with different providers, meaning there is more than one organisation to refer to, and a lack of clarity in knowing how to access the right service provider working in that district.  Officers would note the view for further consideration during the consultation process and stated the referral pathways should be the same.

i.       Members asked how schools would be involved in the consultation process and if they access current commissioned services.  Officers stated that there are examples of current services happening in schools and schools will be invited to be involved in the consultation process.

j.       Members asked if there was an impact of service users from other local authorities using the services of BYL.  Officers stated that there were a small percentage of service users who access services (less than 6%).  But this is offset with Bristol young people accessing services in neighbouring authorities.

k.      Members stated that the report failed to look like children and young people had fun.  Officers acknowledged the end of year report is very statistical and assurances given that young people did have fun! The quarterly summary report provides a flavour of the activities children and young people engage in.

Resolved:

       i.          To note the report