Agenda item

[Report of the Director for Children’s Services. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Children and  Families.]Update on outcome of national consultation on funding and impact for Haringey and London.

The Cabinet Member for Children and Families introduced the report which put forward an in principle decision to join the London Regional Adoption Agency .This had been developed by the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS) with the aim of speeding up the matching of children, deemed to be suitable for adoption, to suitable adoptees and to improve outcomes for adopted children.

The Cabinet Member reiterated the in principle decision being sought with no further commitments to join the agency until a business case and detailed financial analysis is considered by Cabinet, later in the new year.

In response to a question from Councillor Morris, there was not expected to be an increase in out of borough adoptions.

RESOLVED

1. To agree to the development of the London Regional Adoption Agency, a not-for-profit corporate entity, jointly owned by the founding London boroughs and working in partnership with Voluntary Adoption Agencies to deliver adoption services and as set out in paragraph 15 of this report;

2. To agree in principle to join the proposed London Regional Adoption Agency subject to the detailed business case and financial analysis; and

3. That there be a further report to Cabinet on the details of the proposed arrangement including the business case, financial analysis, arrangement for consultation with staff and other stakeholders and related legal documentation and for a final decision on joining the London Regional Adoption Agency.

Reason for decision

The Cabinet approval is required for the Council to work collaboratively with other London boroughs to continue to develop the London Regional Adoption Agency with the intention of joining the agency, when it becomes operational in 2017/18.

Alternative options considered

The London Regional Adoption Agency has been developed to meet the needs of London boroughs. It would operate in a similar manner to the London Admissions and London Grid for Learning Teams, with governance through ALDCS and London Councils.

The DfE require all local authorities to join a regional agency by 2020, therefore ‘do nothing’ is not an available option within the current policy and political landscape.

Alternatives to the London option would be to join another developing regional agency or create a new model. Other developing regional agencies have not been developed with the involvement of London boroughs. No other regional agencies have proposed a model linked to the governance of London local authorities. The London model is being developed with the complexity of the borough and provider landscape in mind. Many of the models being developed in other regions e.g. single LA host would not be appropriate to meet this complexity of need.

Any new agency being developed would have the same timescale requirements and would need to access development funding independently. ALDCS identified that using existing arrangements (e.g. consortia) would not remove the performance and service variation across London and most current consortia regions would not achieve the DfE aims for scale. A sub-divided London would lose the benefit of the wider pool of adopters and the standardisation of service offering.

Given the policy drive from the Government and examples of good joint working in other areas of children’s services, a Regional Adoption Agency as described in this paper is considered to be the only viable option at present.