The ‘Sufficiency Duty’ is from Section 22G of the Children’s Act 1989. The duty requires local authorities to take steps to secure, so far as reasonably practicable, sufficient accommodation within the authority’s area which meets the needs of children that the local authority are looking after, and whose circumstances are such that it would be consistent with their welfare for them to be provided with accommodation that is in the local authority’s area. Good practice guidance is 20 miles which is what we aspire too.

This strategy sets out how we will fulfil these duties and meet the needs of our cared for, care experienced and separated young people. It includes the Council’s commissioning intentions and supports our vision for children and young people. This is articulated in the Cared for, Care Experienced and Separated Young Peoples Strategy, where we aim to ensure all cared for, care experienced and separated young people live in the right home to meet their need at the right time and whereby our plans ensure they move on in a planned way at the right time, as they develop into adulthood with the skills and support to continue to achieve and grow.

Securing sufficient homes to meet the needs of cared for, care experienced and separated young people is a vital step in delivering improved outcomes. It can be best achieved through a step change in commissioning practice across all services which contribute to improving outcomes for cared for or care experienced young people who are in need, who are at risk of care or custody. This is inclusive of internal growth and development. Securing sufficient accommodation requires a whole system approach which delivers early intervention and preventative services to support children in their families as, well as better services for children if they need to be cared for outside of their birth family.

Where commissioning and sufficiency for cared for, care experienced and separated young people is already working well, we see examples of:

• choice in relation to the different homes children and young people live in
• reduced unplanned moves from one home to another
• better links with universal and specialist services based in local community areas or whereby they are easily accessible
• lower numbers of children being cared for outside of their birth families and, long-term, significantly reduced costs in providing services which supported children and young people

By working with our partners both within the local authority, such as housing and planning and those external to the local authority, such private, voluntary and independent providers, we must be able to secure, where reasonably practicable, sufficient homes where there is a range of different direct care or support or indirect community based services which ensure our cared for, care experienced and separated young people remain, where it is safe to do so, in their local authority area flourishing in their communities.

The sufficiency strategy is underpinned by our commitment to young people as set out in our corporate parenting principles. In Cumberland our principles tell cared for, care experienced and separated young people about the hopes and aspirations we have for them. These being:

1. Your experiences will be at the heart of any decision we make, including how we plan our services, how our services work and how we check that they are working well.
2. Every member of staff in Cumberland Council is responsible for making sure you are supported and that you reach your full potential.
3. Wherever safe and possible, you should live with your family. We will ensure that if you are in care, it is only because you need to be in care.
4. We will try and stop you from being in care by working with your family earlier on and supporting them to give you ever opportunity for you to stay within your family. Where you need to be in care, we will look at all options for you to live with your extended family or family friends where possible.
5. We will try our best to provide the best quality homes possible for you, that give you all the support you need and make you feel safe.
6. We want to make sure you are not moved around a lot and that you have one stable home to live in and a family to belong to. We will support you to keep and strengthen the relationships you have that are important to you. We will help you to keep in contact with people that you love throughout your childhood and into adulthood.
7. We will support you when you are ready to leave our care to move on independently, doing everything we can to make sure you are set up for life.

Our vision

“We want you and every cared for child and care experienced young person to grow, flourish and thrive so that you reach your full potential. You have the right to be happy, healthy, feel safe and secure. We want you to feel loved, valued and respected with the best opportunities to succeed in your lives.”

We recognise that the diversity of our children and families brings a rich heritage to Cumberland. We commit to carefully listen to and celebrating the diverse backgrounds of our children and families in all we do. Cumberland Council have committed to a set of values that underpins not just what we do, but how we strive to do these things. These are to be:

• compassionate
• innovative
• empowering
• ambitious
• collaborative

Our political leaders and officers have been sensitive to the lived experience of Cumberland’s children and young people and are committed to improving not only where young people live, but the care and support they receive. This has led to a firm political commitment to prioritise investment in effective services for children and families, and underpinned our decision make cared for and care experienced a protective characteristic, ensuring we give this the importance it deserves across all the work we do.

Local authorities have several duties towards children within their area which are related to the Sufficiency Duty. In particular: 

• Section 17(1) of the 1989 Act provides that it is the general duty of a local authority to provide a range and level of services to children in need (as defined in section 17(10) of the 1989 Act) and their families in the local area which are appropriate to their needs. 
• Section 20 of that Act requires local authorities to provide accommodation for children in need within their area who appear to them to require accommodation in accordance with the provisions of that section. 
• Section 21 requires a local authority to accommodate certain children who are either removed or kept away from home under Part V of the 1989 Act or who are subject to a criminal court order. 

When determining the most appropriate home for a child, section 22C(7)(a) also requires the local authority to give preference to a home with a relative, friend or other person connected with the child and who is also a local authority foster parent. 

Section 22C sets out the additional factors (in no order of priority) which the local authority must take into consideration when deciding the most appropriate choice: 

• Allowing the child to live near his/her home.
• Not disrupting the child’s education or training.
• Enabling the child and their cared for sibling to live together.
• Meeting the needs of disabled children.
• Providing accommodation within the local authority’s area, unless that is not reasonably practicable. 

The Children and Social Work Act 2017, extends the duties on all Local Authorities (including District and Borough Councils) to have regard to a set of Corporate Parenting Principles when exercising their functions in relation to looked after children and care leavers up on the age of 25. Cumberland’s Corporate Parenting Board plan has recently been reviewed to ensure there is a strong link between its role and level of scrutiny in the delivery of the Sufficiency Strategy and its delivery plan.

Cumberland covers an area of 3,012 square km and is much more sparsely populated than the national average.

Cumberland has a ‘super-ageing’ population which means that there is an increase in the number of people in the older age groups, and a decrease in the number in the younger age groups. In 2020 nearly a quarter of the Cumberland population were aged over 65. This is a greater proportion than the average for the country. At the same time, more younger people with disabilities are surviving into adulthood and old age, and more people are living for longer with complex needs, frailty, long term conditions and/or dementia. There is a cared for children rate of 88 per 10,000 which is significantly above the national average. In addition to this, a significant number of children are reported as living in ‘relative poverty’ with 16.1% of children living in relatively low-income families. 

In April 2024 Cumberland Council: 

• had 1,531 of our children and young people in need of statutory support and intervention
• had 263 of our children and young people were being helped to be protected by statutory services
• had 480 of our children and young people were cared for
• 9% of those who became cared for in the last six months were separated young people
• the average age of our cared for young people is between 10 and 15 years old
• 24 children and young people had been adopted in the last 6 months and 36 children and young people were waiting to be adopted
• 53% of our cared for children and young people identified as male
• 89% of our cared for children and young people identified as white British with 5% identifying as black or black British
• 8% of our cared for children were recorded as having a disability, and 107 (21.3%) had an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP)
• 48% of our cared for children and young people have a long-term plan of living in their foster family
• 233 of our cared for children and young people live in with Cumberland’s Foster carers
• nearly all of our cared for young people who live in their children’s home are cared for by private providers
• during the first three quarters of the financial year 31 children moved homes 3 or more times within the year, equating to 6.1% of all homes
• the largest age group of our care experienced young person is 17
• 62% of our care experienced young people are male

We stay in touch with 97% of our 16–17-year-old care experienced young people. Regionally there were 6035 cared for children in homes provided by the independent sector, this represents 40.4% of the total cared for children cohort for Local Authorities in the Placements Northwest Consortium as of December 2023. 2876 (47.7%) of these children are in foster homes, 1454 (24.1%) in residential homes and 1464 (24.3%) in supported accommodation and independent living. 

In England:

• The number of cared for children in England rose to 83,840 - up 2% - continuing the rise seen in recent years. This is a rate of 71 children cared for per 10,000 children - up from 70 last year.
• The numbers of children becoming cared for and ceasing to be cared for have both seen an increase with a 6% increase in those entering - to 33,000 - and 5% increase - to 31,680 in those ceasing to be cared for. 
• Many of the changes within the data can be explained by the large increase in separated children this year. The numbers of separated children have increased by 29%, following the 37% increase seen last year. Equally we have seen an increase in the number of separated young people which is current over 9% of our population of cared for young people.

Adoptions rose sharply from 2011 to a peak in 2015 nationally but have since in decline. It has been reported that this may be related to two court rulings in 2013, which stated that adoption orders should be made only when there was no other alternative, such as moving a child with birth relatives. Equally we have seen an increase in the number of young people who live with family members in a kinship arrangement, this is above the national average at present and continues to be one of our priority areas. 

Nationally, the number of cared for children who were adopted was 2,960. Last year there was a 4% increase following a large decrease of 17% during the pandemic, resulting from the impact on court proceedings meaning cases progressed more slowly or were paused. In Cumberland we saw the same trend. As we moved forward throughout 2024 we will focus more deeply on our summary needs assessment data informing our strategic plan and will review this annually in line with the overall sufficiency strategy.

Summary needs assessment 

Understanding and forecasting need, demand and supply is essential to the delivery of an effective sufficiency strategy, therefore we will use our data to help us deliver our plans. As well as using data from the CHAT, we will use: 

• national and local data such as Ofsted’s annual publication of national social care data and the Department for Education’s annual collection of cared for data to inform us of the characteristics of cared for, care experienced, separated young people, children in need of help and protection, and those in need of early help to help us identify emerging trends and changes in these populations
• data on the length of time cared for young people live in care, where they lived data on potential barriers to children and young people returning to family where it is safe to do so (for example, backlogs in family court hearings)
• data on stability, and benchmarking that compares actual data on where cared for, care experienced and separated young people live within the local authority, by population trends, economic trends or market opportunities

In Cumberland we truly believe in giving children and young people a voice which is listened to and where possible influences the plans we have. 

What our children and young people have told us.

Relationships with family and family networks 

Our cared for and care experienced children and young people talk to us about having different feelings and emotions about time with their birth families and family networks. For those young people who remain connected to their families they tell us about how they want to stay connected and what this means for them. Children and young people talk about how their carers help them manage the different emotions connected to family time and for some children and young people they would like to see their families more but understand why they cannot. Cared for, care experienced and separated young people continue to tell us that birth families, new families and carers and family networks are incredibly important to them and one of the most important thing in their lives. 

Relationships with friends 

Our cared for, care experienced and separated young people tell us that friendships are incredibly important to them and that for some young people they find it difficult to form friendships and welcome the opportunities created through our participation service to help them make new friends and reduce social isolation. For some young people they feel anxious about meeting new friends, joining groups or attending the drop-in sessions so look to their carers or professional network to support with this in the first case or help them maintain friendships when their friends move. Children and young people have spoken about how school is so important, as that’s when they see most of their friends. Due to some friends living further away they are unable to ‘just knock on them’ and for some young people they rely on having to get the bus or ask their foster carer to take them to see their friends. 

“My best friend is moving miles away and I will miss him but my foster carer has arranged sleep overs so we can still see each other” 
15-year-old cared for young person

Relationships with Social Workers and carers 

Most of our cared for and care experienced young people tell us that they have good relationships with their social workers and the people who have responsibility for their direct care and support. Nearly all cared for children and young people feel that their social workers and the people who are responsible for their direct care and support are good at listening and are kind. Whilst most children and young people have benefited from having the social worker and carers for some time some young people have told us that the people around them have changed or they have moved homes in an unplanned way and for some of these young people they would have preferred things stay the same and for others they are much happier. Our care experienced young people tell us that their relationship with their personal advisor is important and needed as they moved into adulthood. Cared for and Care experienced young people have told us that some of the words we use are not as kind as they would like them to be. As a result of this, our cared for and care experienced young people are helping us review the words we use as part of our ‘language that cares’ commitment. 

“I can talk to my social worker, even though he is old he still listens, and he is funny. He doesn’t give me everything I want but at least he says why instead of just agreeing and not doing it.” 
Cared for young person – The voice 

Identity and inclusion 

Our cared for, care experienced and separated young people have told us that LGBTQIA+ people described exclusion, mistreatment and hate (often unreported) in local communities, and it is important that we consider this when we are thinking about the people who care and support them as well as where they live. Experiences often feel more isolating when young people feel there is limited social networks near where they live so ensuring social support networks are made is important too. 

Neuro-divergent people described the struggle to be seen, to be heard, to have help to understand their specific divergence and what adjustments at home, in school, or in the community could help make their lives easier; and a marked energy from local leaders in Cumberland to understand neurodivergence differently influences our plans when we consider where children and young people live. 

Education and employment 

Our cared for and care experienced young people continue to talk to us about how important education or employment is to them. They talk to us about their schools and higher education establishments and what this brings to them in relation to their learning, their social networks, and their independence. Most of our children and young people talk positively about this but for a small number of young people this has not always been as positive an experience and the support of the virtual school and inclusion teams have instrumental in supporting change. For some young people they are seeking education or employment, and whilst this is more difficult due to where they are in their life at the present time, there are people to support them ensuring education and employment continues to be a future aspiration.

Supporting families to stay together

Cumberland Early Help and Prevention Strategy outlines our offer to children, young people and their families. This offer explores how we will proactively work to keep children and families together supporting them at the first point and wrapping around services which enable them to remain together in their communities with support that makes a difference. It is essential that through our focus on maintaining families, exploring ways of supporting families at the earliest opportunity we ensure we can meet our sufficiency needs for children and young people when they need to be cared for and that we are able to ensure services are in place for children and families when they return home. 

Improvements in Care Planning, Reviews and Permanence Planning 

We have improved our entry to care and legal planning to ensure that we have a very clear level of scrutiny of all decisions relating to children and young people becoming cared for. This ensures we are exploring how we can support young people to remain at home or in their family networks where it is safe to do so. 

Our approach to care planning includes lifelong links, which is an approach to exploring family members and those within the family networks who can care and support young people to remain in the family network or return to the wider family network. 

A ‘Homes for Children and Resource Panel’ has been established to oversee, challenge, endorse, and review the individual needs for Cumberland’s cared for children and young people arising from the care planning processes. The role of panel is to ensure that all proposed or existing externally commissioned residential, Independent Fostering Agencies (IFA) and Semi-Independent provision continues to meet the individual needs of cared for children whilst ensuring that best value principles are adhered to in the care planning process. The Panel will also address potential or actual drift in care planning by reviewing such placements and funding arrangements as appropriate whilst ensuring that as we deliver on the intention that the right children and young are in receipt of the right services and there is no risk of drift or delay in supporting children and young people to be in the right home for their needs.

We are strengthening our strategic approach to supporting young people to return home in a timely way, where it is safe to do so. Through effective responses to reunification, we will support children and families to remain together. We are committed to do this through our strengthen approach to legal planning, achieving permanence and decision making through the re-design of our panel processes, tracking progress to improve outcomes for children and young people. As part of this work, we have been successful in securing funding from the Department of Education to develop our approach to Family Finding through our Life Long Links approach to practice.

As we continue to make progress with the disaggregation of internal fostering resources, we have continued to have a hosted fostering service which covers the Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness Council. In total there are 219 mainstream foster families. 8 fostering households have joined us in the last 12 months and 18 have de-registered. The main reason for de-registration is due to retirement. As with most fostering services we have an older cohort of foster carers therefore it remains a key priority for us to continuity recruit new carers to replace those who have moved on to retirement. 

In 2023 to 2024 we have made progress with our plans to develop a Regional Fostering Hub - ‘Foster with Us’. We have partnered with Westmorland and Furness Council, Blackburn, Blackpool and Lancashire as part of the regional approach to Fostering Recruitment and Retention Hub. The recruitment hub will work alongside us to generate a regional communications approach and engage with prospective foster carers from their initial enquiry through to their application streamlining the process and looking at supporting carers through the pre-approval stages. The assessment of foster carers remains the responsibility of the local authority.

As part of the overall recruitment strategy for foster carers Cumberland Council have received funding from the DfE to implement their first Mockingbird constellation. The principles behind the mockingbird are that of nurturing the relationships between children, young people and foster families supporting them to build a resilient and caring community of six to ten satellite families. This is called a constellation. Each constellation is supported by a hub carer and a liaison officer. The constellation offers vital peer support and guidance alongside social activities and sleepovers to strengthen relationships and permanence. Following evaluation of its success we are keen to further develop this approach ensuring there is a range of different types of support for foster carers regardless of where they are in their fostering carer. 

We have not wavered on our commitment to support and retain foster carers. Whilst we have continued to roll out training, supervisions, social activities, support groups and the opportunity for carers to take part in different opportunities we have also launched our Foster Carers for Cumbria Project Group. The purpose of this co-production group is to review the recruitment, journey to approval and support and retention of internal foster carers ensuring that the experience of others influences and shapes our recruitment of new carers. The group, which works across the hosted patch includes the fostering manager, communications and engagement lead and carers. The delivery plan is regularly reviewed as part of the meetings and is shaping our foster carers recruitment and retention strategy. We have strengthened our support offer to kinship carers, increasing the number of kinship carers and promoting the ways in which people can move into this role, underpinned by practical and financial support. A kinship transformation plan underpins this work and runs parallel to the work undertaken to support foster carers.

Whilst it is our ambition that where a child or young person cannot live within their family home or family network, we have sufficient in house foster carers to care for our children and young people in the first case. Whilst we recognise that this is not always possible we will do our best to achieve this. We value our relationships with independent fostering agency (IFA’s) and the role they play in helping us meet our sufficiency duty. We aim to work more closely with them when necessary, to find caring families homes and prevent unnecessary moves into residential care. However, it is our ambition that where a child or young person cannot live withing their family home or family network we have sufficient in house foster carers to care for our children and young people in the first case. Whilst we have seen a 2% rise in the use of IFA’s in the last year we continue to be below the national average, however this rise has helped us keep children in a family home. 

Improving sufficiency

Using the Foster Carers Annual Reviews to strategically explore carer capacity and encourage stretching approval/expanding approval when appropriate to meet the needs of children and young people with a disability, teenagers, larger sibling families and separated young people. Exploring opportunities to increase bedroom capacity of known and valued foster carers by developing opportunities which can fund adaptations of carers homes. 

Continued roll out of training to foster carers, in particular training which links to understanding and responding to trauma, life story and responding and supporting complex needs, which will in turn increase foster carers confidence when caring for children and young people, maintain stability and improve the overall lived experiences of our cared for children and young people. 

Maximisation of foster carer recruitment and retention through our targeted strategy to ensure wherever possible children and young people are able to live with our in house foster carers. This includes the recruitment of foster carers who can care for mothers/fathers and their baby as part of a fostering family. 

Launch the first mockingbird constellation. 

Strengthen our holistic approach to foster home stability, engaging all stakeholders involved with the child and foster carer utilising our resilience team. 

Strengthen and broker a closer relationship with Cumberland’s providers to increase access to local families, embedding a Cumberland first approach. 

Launch of new approach to long-term fostering - strengthening matching, simplifying processes, and providing proportionate planning that best meets the needs of each individual child.

Staying put 

Our cared for young people tell us that remaining with their foster carers is important to them and our care experienced young people and separated young people tell us that they like the choice of remaining with their foster carers or moving into a new home which offers them more independence. We know we need to do more to make this more accessible for young people by growing the current number of staying put arrangements. 

Improving sufficiency through: 

• targeting foster carer recruitment to include staying put and promoting staying put with the current cohort of foster carers
• reviewing the incentives linked to staying close as part of the recruitment and retention strategy for foster cares
• exploring alternatives to staying put which support cared for young people to remain in family homes post 18 as an alternative to supported and semi supported homes

Home stays 

We have recognised as a service for children, the need for supported lodgings provision for Care Experienced young people who have a plan of moving towards independence. The service is in the process of registration with Ofsted. As of April 2024, Cumbria have 30 providers and across the Cumberland footprint and we have 13 provider hosts who are supporting 16 care experienced young people. It is our intention to expand this opportunity in line with the growth of the fostering service and supporting living provisions.

The ICHA “State of the Sector” survey 9 Spring 2023 reported record levels of demand for children’s homes, particularly for children and young people with increasingly complex needs leading to the independent sector that often struggles to keep pace. Regionally, there has been 5% increase in the number of external residential placements since September 2023 to a total of 1454. 

Although all regions had an increase in the number of children’s homes this year, these are not evenly distributed across England. The Northwest accounts for a quarter of all children’s homes and almost a quarter of all places and data from the Ofsted Social Care Providers list, indicates a 14% increase in the number of Children’s Residential Homes in the Northwest in September 2023, more significant growth than seen in previous years. As a result, a significant proportion of the sufficiency in the Northwest is utilised by local authorities from out with the region. 

Equally more homes are not operating to full capacity usually due to caring for young people with more complex needs, new homes being smaller in occupancy levels and difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff across the sector. 

Significant rises in the average prices paid by authorities in residential and supported accommodation have continued with providers charging more or requesting multiple fees creating voids due to the complex needs, coupled with of one young person. This impacts on overall provider numbers as well as putting additional cost pressures on local authority budgets.

There are four mainstream children’s homes and two edge of care homes across Cumbria. These continue to be available to both Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness Councils following local government reform, with the oversight being hosted by Cumberland. We currently have: 

• one 6 bedded children’s home in Barrow in Furness which cares for young people aged 8 to 17 years. The home was last inspected in August 2023 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Good
• one 4 bedded children’s home in Kendel which cares for young people aged 8 to 17 years. The home was last inspected in October 2023 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Good
• one 6 bedded children’s home in Whitehaven which cares for young people aged 8 to 17 years. The home was last inspected in October 2023 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Good
• one 4 bedded children’s home in Penrith which cares for young people aged 8 to 17 years. The home was last inspected in October 2023 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Good
• one 4 bedded children’s home in Kendel which cares for young people aged 8 to 17 years. The home was last inspected in October 2023 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Requires Improvement
• one 5 bedded children’s home in Carlise which offers outreach and respite care and works with families to stop children becoming cared for. It also supports rehabilitation home and supporting potential breakdown of fostering arrangements. The home was last inspected in July 2022 and received an overall rating by Ofsted of Requires Improvement

There are 46 Independent Children's Homes owned by 7 different organisations in the Cumberland footprint who can collectively provide care and accommodation for up to 78 young people, however 33 of them only offer accommodation for a short period of assessment. 

All of these homes are registered to provide care and accommodation for children with EBD, .3 can take children with an LD and 2 are single sex occupancy only. 3 are linked to a school and can only be utilised if also utilising the school (15 beds) - 2 of which are the LD and 2 of which are the single gender (boys) 18 of these have not yet been inspected by OFSTED, all others were inspected in 2023 to 2024: 

• 23 are rated as good
• 5 are rated as requires Improvement

There are 34 Independent Children's Homes owned by 12 different organisations in the Westmorland and Furness footprint who can collectively provide care and accommodation for up to 76 young people, however 16 of these places only offer accommodation for a short period of assessment. 

All of which are registered to provide care and accommodation for children with EBD, .2 can take children with an LD and 3 are single gender occupancy only. 1 is linked to a school (8 beds).

12 of these have not yet been inspected by OFSTED, all others were inspected in 2023 to 2024: 

• 1 was rated Outstanding 
• 17 are rated as Good 
• 3 are rated as Requires Improvement 
• 1 is rated as Inadequate 

The Investment in Residential Care Accommodation Transformation Project has been established by Cumberland Council to oversee and drive the transformation and Investment in Residential Care Accommodation across Cumberland. The project will: 

• develop a clear vision and strategic direction for the future approach to Residential Care Accommodation for Cumberland Council
• develop an operating model which forecasts the need for future service provision through analysis of existing children (need), patterns of geographical future demand (future need) and evaluation of different models of service delivery (internal-external)
• produce a Childrens Residential Care Strategy with an accompanied Service Asset Management Plan
• review the current in house provision

Improving sufficiency through: 

• develop a clear vision and strategic direction for the future approach to Residential Care Accommodation for Cumberland Council underpinned through its in-house operating model
• produce a Childrens Residential Care Strategy for in house children’s residential care with an accompanied Service Asset Management Plan and growth plan which ensures occupancy rates are maximised
• explore capital funding opportunities to develop more in house children’s homes
• develop a recruitment and retention strategy for the residential work force which includes a succession planning strategy for workforce development
• strengthen and broker a closer relationship with Cumberland’s providers to increase access to local homes, embedding a Cumberland first approach. We want to build relationships with local providers to forge community networks for our children and keep them close as it is essential to our plan and transformation and is good practice for our children to have strong relationships
• stimulate the market for external providers to partner with Cumberland to offer local children’s homes which meet the need of our children and young people
• review our residential offer to strengthen targeted edge of care and return home time scales and sustainability
• ensuring homes are situated in the right parts areas linking the principles of staying close and meaningful independence preparation, return to parent care and communities support and engagement developing long lasting networks

Kindship

We know that children and young people often have better outcomes in life when they remain within their family and friends’ network and for most of our children and young people, they tell us that this is the most important thing for them. Cumberland’s Kinship team work hard to ensure that our kinship carers receive the right support, training, and access to services to help them care for the children and young people with whom they already have a family bond. By ensuring we are focused in the right areas we will ensure that cared for children and young people are, where it is safe to do so with their families. Our sufficiency approach to kinship care is evidenced in our lifelong links approach, which continues to explore how children and young people can stay connected with their families and through our reunification plans, ensuring we never say never regarding whether a child or young person will be able to return home to their family if the are cared for outside of the family home. 

Improve sufficiency through: 

• implement our no detriment policy which will look to move foster carers across to kinship carers, maintaining levels of support but whilst recognising the child / young person is not subject to the statutory involvement aligned with being cared for
• review the quality of the wider support offer to ensure kinship carers are supported to meet the needs of the children and young people in their care and unplanned moves are reduced
• increase the number of kinship carers, keeping cared for children and young people in their family networks

In Cumberland we refer to our Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) as separated young people. As with most local authorities, most of our separated young people have joined us after arriving in the UK through the home’s office transfer scheme. We recognise that their journey has been exceptionally traumatic, often on the way they have been subject to abuse and neglect and lost family members or friends either as part of their journey or by moving away from home. Most of our separated young people live in support accommodation but for a few they live with their foster families. Initially most of our young people lived more than 20 miles from Cumberland however as we have developed our sufficiency response, we have seen young people move into the Cumberland area and new young people move into Cumberland when they arrive with us. 

Whilst several of the sufficiency intentions are captured in the fostering, children’s home and supported living sections within this strategy and we would invite you to think about our separated young people when you are reading them. 

The Separated Children (over 18) Accommodation Transformation Project has been established by Cumberland Council to drive the transformation and Review of Pathway accommodation across Cumberland. 

The scope of the project, is: 

• develop a clear vision and strategic direction for the future approach to Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (18+) Accommodation for Cumberland Council
• to Develop a Clear Model for future service provision for Previously Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) who are now Adults, through analysis of existing children (need), patterns of geographical future demand (future need) and evaluation of different models of service delivery (internal-external)

Improve sufficiency

Whilst several of the sufficiency intentions are set out in other areas of this strategy, such as the recruitment of foster cares or staying put, amongst others there are some additional intentions which have been captured below. 

Improve sufficiency through: 

• ensure carers and supported living providers have the right level of knowledge and skills to support our separated young people in locally provided home, understanding the impact of trauma because of being separated, potentially exploited and as part of their seeking asylum claim
• work with local landlords and housing providers to ensure taster flats and suitable accommodation is in areas which support separated young people to access the special services which they need liked to their identity and need and whereby they can ensure their social needs are supported
• delivery of the outcomes set out in The Separated Children (over 18) Accommodation Transformation Project Group as outlined above

Children and young people with a disability can access targeted short breaks and overnight short breaks. As part of the targeted short break offer families can also source their own support through direct payments. Across Cumberland and Westmore we have two registered short break services, which each offer 35 to 40 young people aged 8 to 17 overnight shorts break in the registered short break homes. As with children’s homes nationally, the overnight short break homes have struggled to reach 75% occupancy levels due to the increased complexity of some young people and the ability to match young people with others during their stays. Whilst this is not unique to Cumberland and certainly something which was highlighted in Ofsted’s last review on ‘How local authorities plan for sufficiency of accommodation that meets the needs of children in care and care leavers - Published 18 November 2022 it is a challenge. 

Parents and providers have told us that there is more we can do by working differently to support children and young people and that whilst the services provide a good enough offer, we have scope to improve this by reviewing the overall offer. 

A short break transformation project group has been established to drive a review of targeted and over night short breaks. The scope of the project, is to: 

• implement the 2024 to 2025 offer subject to a full review in readiness for 2025 onwards
• review the offer, accessibility and achieve best value in relation to scope and attendance
• work with providers to focus delivery of service and expand market opportunities across the private and voluntary sector

Further develop information regarding the local offer and end user satisfaction with the way in which bookings and communications are delivered.

Cumberland Council are not currently part of a regional adoption agency having moved away from Adopt Coast to Coast . This said, it has not prevented us from achieving permanence through adoption for the children and young people of Cumberland. We recognise the national shift and position set out in the care review and are currently working towards our partnership in a regional adoption agency (RAA). 

It is important that we, as a local authority ensure we have a clear focus on permanence through adoption and how we ensure adoption is achieved by removing barriers for our children across the region. Equally it is essential that we continue to ensure whilst there are enough adoptive parents and families, we are focused on the quality of the match with children from across the region to achieve permanence. 

As part of our move towards being in a RAA we will ensure adoptive families have access to a wide range of support services that are offered through a core regional offer as a well as a localised support. Underpinning this will be an extensive training programme, co-produced and ran with adopters who are available to support and develop our adoption community. 

Improve sufficiency through: 

• establish a regional adoption agency which Cumberland Council are part of
• analysis of adoption breakdowns to ascertain whether there are any practice challenges or additional support required to support stability. Working with other regional adoption agencies to map trends and develop services which reduce the number of breakdowns
• a review of our Early Permanence support and learning from the Early Permanence Panel to inform future work and timescales for permanence 
• review and develop our current arrangements for the recruitment and assessment of BAME and LGBTQ+ prospective adopters to ensure that are engaging effectively with these communities

Cumberland Council was established in April 2023 following Local Government Reform. At this time, contracts and services were either split or hosted by one of the sovereign authorities. Whilst many of the frameworks we utilise for the sourcing of homes for our cared for and care experienced young people were not impacted upon by Local Government Reform, we aim to undertake a full review of commissioning intentions. This will reflect the needs/ actions identified in this strategy, therefore, ensuring we continue to deliver services enable us to strengthen our position in the delivery of our statutory duties, and wider reform agendas, whilst building in learning from the Independent Review of Childrens Social Care and the “Stable Homes: Build on love” report. 

When assessing “sufficiency,” Cumberland Council considers the condition of the local market (which will include the level of demand for the specific types of provision locally) and the amount and type of supply that currently exists. We also consider the capacity, quality and suitability of all providers and unique challenges to Cumberland both in relation to its demographic and location. 

Sufficiency covers a wide range of areas within children services, and it is important that key partners, carers, children, young people, and providers are all invested into improving systems and services and ultimately, positive outcomes for the families, children and young people in Cumberland. Regular market engagement events will therefore remain key in the successful delivery of this strategy. 

Cumberland Council is a member of Placements Northwest (PNW), a consortium of local authorities in the northwest undertaking collaborative commissioning work. Commissioners from the council ensure we fully utilise membership and the opportunities this affords. This includes: 

• receiving regular updates about the provider market
• meetings with other Northwest local authorities individually or as part of working groups to tackle the key areas impacting upon sufficiency/quality
• attendance at regular commissioning managers meetings and regional fostering, residential, education and supported accommodation meetings or forums
• working with PNW to commission Flexible Purchasing Systems (FPS) for Children’s Residential Care, Foster Care, Leaving Care and SEND Education placements
• making placements using the above systems. All providers must reach and maintain minimum standards to remain on these systems

Our Commissioning process is adapted from a model produced by the Institute of Public Care (IPC) and is relevant across health, education, social care and housing services (Please see figure 1).

This work will be based on the key commissioning principles set out below: 

• ensure the voices of our cared for, care experienced and separated young people are considered and coproduce the offers outlined the sufficiency plan
• work closely with internal and external partners, and the wider market to delivery our sufficiency agenda through targeted and open market engagement activities, increasing our options for homes for children across the Cumberland footprint
• review our current commissioning arrangements for residential care
• be a strong leader with the market, sharing intelligence on existing and emerging trends and co-producing new innovative models
• develop a ‘Cumberland First’ offer for providers
• support providers, with registration, growth and sustainability to meet need, ambition and high-quality, sustainable services by ensuring a culture of high support and high challenge is in place to measure outcomes in line with contracts and in the spirt of partnership working
• capitalise on collaborations with other regional and likeminded Local Authority Partners, Providers and Health providers to address specific gaps in provision seeking opportunities for joint funding, and pathfinding. 
• ensure value for money principles are achieved to enable the Cumberland pound to stretch further as part of the wider offer for cared for, care experienced and separated young people

Through our attendance and engagement with the transformation Board and Corporate Parenting Board, we will establish a working group of key officers from commissioning, children services and wider key stakeholders, who will monitor the intentions, actions, and priorities set out in the sufficiency plan. This group will develop innovative new concepts to meet our sufficiency duties in response to emerging needs, trends, and legislation as aforementioned. The sufficiency action plan will be reviewed annually.

Whilst the numbers of cared for young people who require secure accommodation in Cumberland remains low, there is a need we, and we are faced with similar challenges to those faced by other local authorities nationally. A move among health partners to reduce mental health inpatient beds and care has contributed to this. The move followed a recommendation as part of the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into children and young people’s mental health. It means that there are now more children who have complex needs or are a significant risk to themselves or others, but who cannot be detained under the Mental Health Act. These children either do not meet the criteria for a secure accommodation order, cannot live in a secure children’s home (SCH) because of severe shortage and lack of availability, or the secure children’s home would not meet their needs even if there was space available (as evidenced in Ofsted’s report on ‘How local authorities plan for sufficiency of accommodation that meets the needs of children in care and care leavers - Published 18 November 2022). 

Improving sufficiency

Whilst it is not our intention to develop a secure children’s home as part of our review of in house and externally provided children’s home it is part of our plan to review our offer for young people who are in need of a step up or step down home where there is a team of skilled and committed carers who are able to meet the needs of young people complex needs or are a significant risk to themselves or others.

From October 2023 Supported Accommodation became a regulated sector. As a region we had some concerns about providers withdrawing from the market due to regulation and how this may impact on sufficiency, however the expected reduction in available provision has not manifested. 

Regionally, there were 1464 children living in Supported Accommodation settings as of December 2023 with numbers rising steadily each quarter; 43% since December 2020. 

However, Ofsted have reported that there are 2968 places holding active or proposed registrations meaning we will only require 49% of the potential capacity to meet current need across the north west. 

An oversupply of places means the placing authority is more able to select homes that meet need effectively, are high quality and priced competitively. 

Cumberland Council has 3 flats (one shared) which are currently going through Ofsted registration as supported accommodation. There are 11 registered Independent Supported Accommodation Homes in the Cumberland footprint. These have a capacity of 28 young people. 7 of these are single occupancy/4 are ring-fenced shared accommodation. 

In addition to this, Cumberland Council commissions services for the provision of short-term supported housing provision for young people aged 16 to 24 years who are homeless or at high risk of becoming homeless or where there is a planned need for supported living homes through a sub-regional contract. There are two Foyers in the Cumberland footprint (Carlisle and Copeland) which provide supported accommodation for 16 to 24-year-olds. 

There continues to be limited supply and choice of social housing across Cumbria and one bedded accommodation is more in demand following the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’. Care leavers receive a higher banding in the Choice Based Letting (CBL) scheme in operation in Cumbria and are also able to access the one bed rate until they are 22. We know we need to work harder with our local authority partners and private sector landlords to explore opening more move on accommodation particularly homes which are closer to our family hubs which are a key place where support for our care experienced young people is local. 

A new contact for the provision of emergency accommodation for young people aged 16-24 has been commissioned to commence from 1st April 2024. It is important that we continue to work with this provider through the early part of the contract to ensure we are providing the right services for the right young people. 

Throughout 2023 we have worked with providers to ensure they are ready for inspection by Ofsted in line with the registration of supported living providers who are supporting young people aged 16 to 17. Whilst this work has been timely, and providers have been able to register in line with time scales there is more we need to do over the next few years as this embeds both in Cumberland and nationally. Inclusive of this is the review of the 16/17 homeless response as we continue to improve outcomes for young people who are at risk of or who present as homeless.

Improve sufficiency through: 

• supporting providers during registration and throughout their inspections by Ofsted, and throughout their initial inspections
• developing a clear vision and strategic direction for the future approach to supported Accommodation for Cumberland Council underpinned through its housing strategy
• strengthening and broker a closer relationship with Cumberland’s providers to increase access to local homes, embedding a Cumberland first approach
• stimulating the market for external providers to partner with Cumberland to deliver local supported living homes and taster flats which meet the need of our care experienced young people and separated young people
• reviewing our offer to strengthen our support to care experienced young people by joining the sufficiency strategy with the care for, care experienced and separate young people’s strategy
• ensuring homes are situated in the right parts areas linking the principles of staying close and meaningful independence preparation and communities support and engagement developing long lasting networks
• reviewing the 16 to 17 homelessness protocol

Sufficiency covers a wide range of areas within children services, and it is important that partners, carers, children, young people, and providers are all invested into the actions contained so partnership and collaboration will remain key therefore Market engagement events will be used to ensure the strategy is kept live. It is essential that we continue to listen to and act upon what cared for, care experienced and separated young people tell us so that we can deliver what they need to achieve permanence, return to parent care or move into independence successfully with the skills, knowledge and networks in place to be successful. 

A delivery group will be established to ensure delivery of the sufficiency strategy and its delivery plan. The group will be made up of key partners from across the local authority which will include officers from children’s services, commissioning, housing, and external partners such as private providers, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The group will report into the Corporate Parenting Board in line with the delivery of the Corporate Parenting Plan. 

A set of performance indicators will be developed by the delivery group and used to evidence progress again the plan. This will include narrative examples which underpin the vision and principles of the sufficiency strategy in line with improving outcomes for cared for, care experienced and separated young people. 

In addition to the above Boards transformation work set out in the strategy and wider sufficiency intentions, which are detailed in the sufficiency delivery plan will be governed by the Children's Service Transformation Board which is chaired by the Director of Children's Services.