Agenda item

Insourcing of Travel Buddies to support SEN young People

[Report of the Director of Children’s Services.  To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children and Families]

 

This report seeks approval of the proposal to insource the Travel Buddy Service in order to maintain service, improve quality of provision and to support a community wealth approach

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children and Families introduced the report which reported on work carried out to evaluate the Council’s travel buddy service and sought approval for the creation of an inhouse team in line with the Council’s Insourcing Policy.  This had been a long journey in reforming SEN travel, and the in-house service would provide 62 support staff for young people every day.  All members of staff would be employed directly by the Council.

 

The Cabinet Member responded the questions from the Cabinet:

-           The staff employed by the service were mainly local people who had previously been employed on zero-hour contracts without the benefits of proper employment.

-           Paragraph 7.3 of the report outlined how the service would improve active travel – by encouraging people to walk or use public transport where possible.

 

RESOLVED

 

1.         That Cabinet approves the insourcing of the Council’s travel buddies service from the current interim DPS arrangement brought about by the withdrawal of services from the previous provider.

 

2.        That the service be brought inhouse before September 1st 2021 to coincide with the new academic year.

 

Reasons for decision:

 

The Haringey special educational needs and disability (SEND) School Transport Service provides an important service to children, young people, and their families.  One important part of this service is our travel buddy team who are responsible for accompanying children with special educational needs to their place of learning with the goal of promoting independent travel.

 

Until June 2020, the travel buddy service was facilitated by an external provider.  Due to emerging concerns about COVID, and the future viability of the service, at that time of the UK’s first national lockdown the provider informed the Council that they no longer wished to continue providing the service.

 

In order to preserve the service and to provide continuity for affected children, Haringey promptly committed to keeping all our 62 travel buddies employed via an interim framework facilitated by Procurement colleagues under a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) arrangement.

 

It was acknowledged from the outset that this DPS arrangement would be a temporary measure while a full commissioning review of suitable options for the future travel buddy service was undertaken.  That commissioning process was subsequently carried out in line with the measures set out in the Council’s Insourcing Policy.

 

Haringey’s Insourcing Policy was approved and adopted by Cabinet in October 2019.  The Insourcing Policy includes a commitment to a structured approach to support sustained progress on this agenda by:

      making it easier for us to work collaboratively with our communities in the design and delivery of public services which reflect what they need, recognising that service delivery is a core element of our relationship with residents.

      strengthening our organisational sustainability and resilience, by further developing the skills and knowledge of our workforce; and our organisational capacity and infrastructure.

      increasing the numbers of locally employed people who will benefit from the excellent terms and conditions we offer as an employer.

      opening services to increased scrutiny and accountability to drive improved outcomes; and,

      squeezing the maximum financial and social value from each pound spent.

 

Bringing travel buddies inhouse will lead to a new operating model and potential future alignments with existing teams within the SEN service.  The Council will have more control over the new inhouse service and will be able to manage staff to the same standards as other colleagues within the Children’s Services directorate. 

           

As part of the proposed transition process, it was recognised that any decision to bring Travel Buddies inhouse would be a significant change for staff who were self-employed under the previous external provider and maintain that status under the DPS arrangement.  In order to ensure a collaborative approach and successful co-production of an improved inhouse operating model, the SEND service and project team undertook a thorough and meaningful consultation with Travel buddies over a six-week period in November and December of 2020.

 

The consultation took the form of group consultation and individual conversations with all 62 travel buddies to set out the rationale behind the insource and to get their opinions on how we move forward with the service.  The results of a confidential online survey were overwhelmingly positive in favour of a move towards an insource with 92% of respondees confirming that they wished to transfer to direct employment with Haringey.

 

Haringey’s approach to Community Wealth Building puts an emphasis on the Council using all its available levers to build the prosperity of local people and communities economically, through employment, and socially, with an emphasis on those who are working in lower-paid employment.

 

A future inhouse service represents a significant improvement in the social value calculator contained in the Enabling Framework set out in Appendix 1.  Over 80% of the current travel buddy workforce live in the borough and the remainder live in neighbouring boroughs.  Rather than paying substantial management costs and fees to an external travel provider, we will invest in locally based staff whilst allowing them to benefit from Haringey’s excellent terms and conditions.

 

The inhouse service is achievable at a lower operating cost than the previous external spend.

 

The financial breakdown of the inhouse service, including the new full time equivalent management post, is set out in Table 1 below.

 

Table 1: Financial Cost for inhouse Travel Buddies Service

           

Item

 Value

Total cost per year per Travel Buddy inc. on-cost

(SC1 pro-rata)

£8,960

Number of travel buddies

62

Total staff cost per academic year

£555,120

Total Annual Travel Allowance

£60,784

Assistant Travel Buddy Coordinator (inc. on-costs)

£25,137

Total Service Cost (per academic year)

£641,041

 

This compares to the previous external spend of £664,810, which includes £233,890 of additional management and administrative fees.

The SEND transport budget is informed by demand for children who meet criteria to access support with transport. This budget has been under pressure over recent years resulting in an overspend.  The SEND transport budget in 2019/20 was £4.08m and the spend totalled £5.30m. In 2020/21 the budget was £3.80m and the spend was £4.30m.

 

Lower expenditure within 2020-21 is attributed to reduced transport requirements as a result of schools and colleges being closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.  The travel buddy service was maintained wherever possible but a number of children were in the clinically and extremely vulnerable group (CEV) therefore unable to access provision on site due to shielding.

 

The SEND transport budget has been allocated growth in 2021/22 to meet the pressures in the service, resulting in a total budget of £4.6m. The inhouse model detailed above has added benefits of service improvement, improved experience for families, opportunity for further innovation and cross directorate working and should lead to a reduction of the SEND Transport budget overspend, longer term.

           

Alternative options considered:

 

Maintain existing service externally – this option does not deliver in terms of the Council’s Insourcing Policy objectives.  Third party provision of travel buddies does not provide a sufficient level of control to ensure that it is managed in line with Haringey’s rigorous safeguarding standards.  Market conditions do not provide significant assurances about LLW employment for travel buddies and did not deliver on either the affordability or the social value calculator contained within the Enabling Framework set out in Appendix 1.

 

Service Provision through Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) – Various options have been explored in which part of the service was brought in-house, whilst other elements continued to be provided through third-party provision within both the commercial and the VCS sector.  These options are set out in more detail in Appendix 1 and were not progressed because they did not provide sufficient assurances over the cohesive management and control of the service.   A VCS option was discounted after initial investigation into the local market where a provider with the required capacity and child protection assurances could not be found.

Supporting documents: