Agenda item

The Joint Assistant Director Commissioning, Performance and Inclusion and two managers from the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team, Sean Hill and Joanne Smith, attended the meeting to provide a progress report on the recommissioning of CSE Support Services.

The report noted that in 2016 the Council had entered into contracts with three local voluntary sector organisations to provide support services for adults who had experienced child sexual exploitation (CSE).  These contracts initially ran from 1 July 2016 to 31 March 2019, with the option for them to be extended for a further two years. These contracts had now been extended until September 2020 with the option, if required to continue with a rolling month by month contract up until March 2021.

The Joint Assistant Director, Commissioning, Performance and Inclusion advised that work on a needs analysis that would inform the recommissioning of CSE support services had now been ongoing for 12 months. The Joint Assistant Director advised that ACEPPE had been commissioned to undertake an independent consultation exercise and needs analysis, however this process had been interrupted when significant concerns were raised in relation to clinical governance and service user safety by Rotherham Rise, GROW and the Trauma and Resilience Service. ACEPPE had subsequently provided a pre-consultation report that had been primarily drawn from work with non-commissioned providers, Swinton Lock and Apna Haq.  The Joint Assistant Director advised that this work had now been combined with other sources of information to provide a full needs analysis that included contract performance information, an academically led evaluation of the Trauma and Resilience Service and service user feedback facilitated by current providers.

The Joint Assistant Director advised that a public survey had been launched and that this would feed into the development of the needs analysis, that would in turn inform the recommissioning process. The Joint Assistant Director apologised to the members of the Improving Lives Select Commission with regard to the work that a sub-group of the Commission had undertaken during the summer of 2019 where members had  conducted a benchmarking exercise by conducting interviews with other Local Authorities who had identified the need for post-CSE services, as the report incorrectly named the authorities that had been approached. The Joint Assistant Director confirmed that the authorities that had taken part in the exercise had been Rochdale, Telford and Wrekin and Oxfordshire.

The Joint Assistant Director provided assurance that a timeline that had been developed by the Council’s procurement team that would ensure that new CSE support contracts would be in place prior to the current contracts expiring and that there would be no gaps in provision for the CSE survivors.

Two managers from the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team, Sean Hill and Joanne Smith attended the meeting to provide more detailed information on the commissioning process, noting that the process of developing the needs analysis had taken longer than anticipated due to the need to ensure that a broad range of stakeholder feedback had been gathered and used to inform its development. It was noted that the benchmarking work that had been carried out by the sub-group of the Improving Lives Select Commission would be included in the final draft of the needs analysis and that further work that built on the work carried out by the sub-group had been conducted. The full draft needs analysis was attached as an appendix to the officer’s report and it was noted that this would be updated once the public survey had concluded in advance of it being be used to determine the service specification for the new support contracts.

It was advised that it was anticipated that the service specification and request to start a tender process  would be submitted to Cabinet for approval in June with the results of the tender process being submitted to Cabinet for consideration in October and that the new contracts would come into operation in January 2021.

Members noted that with regard to the timescales allocated for the development of the needs analysis and service specification that the benchmarking work carried out by the Improving Lives sub-group during the summer of 2019 could have been allocated more time and as a consequence could have been wider it its scope. The Joint Assistant Director advised that due to factors that had been outside of their control and the need to ensure public consultation the timescales for the work had needed to be changed.

Members asked for further information on the increase in waiting times for service users to access services at Rothacs that had been shown in data included the officer’s report. Sean Hill, Manager in the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team advised that the increased waiting times were due to increased levels of demand, and that it had been explored whether other providers such as RISE could offer any assistance in dealing with the waiting list. It was noted that the information included in the officer’s report was high level and showed demand from all service users and not just CSE survivors, and as such it was not necessarily CSE survivors who were waiting to access services.  The Chair asked if there was any separate data available that showed how long CSE survivors were waiting to access services. Members were advised that separate data was not available, however  members were assured that from discussions with service providers that CSE survivors were not waiting to access the support that they required, and that the final needs analysis would include the most up to date and accurate data that was available.

The Chair asked why there had been such a large delay in the commissioning of new support services contracts and expressed concern that this meant that service users were accessing services that were not providing as much support as was possible. The Joint Assistant Director advised that engaging with an independent third party in the preparation of the needs analysis in order to ensure that the needs analysis was as robust as possible had led to delays, but assured the Chair and members that the new project timescales were on track to enable new contracts to start being delivered from January 2021.

Members queried the usefulness of some of the qualitative data included in the report on how service users felt about the impact that the support services offered had impacted on them noting that the broadness of the categories for responses and their subsequent interpretation were very subjective. Joanne Smith, Manager in the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team agreed that for the type of service that was being offered, and because of the very different needs of each individual service user that it was very difficult to measure “success”. It was noted that the broadness of the categories for responses had been designed so as to capture as much data as possible in an attempt to give a rounded overall picture of the impact that the services provided had made to individuals. Members asked whether any benchmarking had been completed against the outcomes of post CSE support in other local authority areas. Sean Hill, Manager in the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team advised that benchmarking had not been completed due to the diverse range of services provided by other authorities meaning that it had not been possible to find a service offer comparable to that of Rotherham’s. 

Members noted that when support services for CSE survivors had initially been introduced that this had been done quite quickly in order to meet the need for this service provided, and as such had utilised several providers. Members asked that when the new services were commissioned whether a less disparate and more streamlined service for survivors could be provided by using less providers.  The Joint Assistant Director advised that the experience of service delivery of the previous years would inform the needs analysis and service specification and meant that the services delivered from January 2021 would look very different from the current service offer.

The Chair expressed her disappointment that the benchmarking work that had been completed by the sub-group of the Commission during summer 2019 and the other inputs made by the members into the process of the development of the needs analysis for post CSE support appeared to have been somewhat overlooked in the development of the draft needs analysis, and hoped that t a reconvened sub-group would be able to feed more its development in advance of it being considered by Cabinet

The Chair, on behalf of the committee, thanked the Joint Assistant Director, Commissioning, Performance and Inclusion and Sean Hill and Joanne Smith managers from the Commissioning, Performance and Quality team for attending the meeting and answering their questions.

Resolved: -

(1)  That the proposal that CSE Support Services be re-commissioned by the Council and that new services commence from January 2020, be noted.

(2)  That the Draft Needs Analysis, supplemented by a public consultation process during March 2020, be noted.

(3)  That the proposal that the service specification be developed based on findings of the full needs analysis, and that the commissioning timescale is aligned with the Trauma and Resilience Service, be noted

(4)  That the timescales for the re-commissioning CSE Support Services be noted.

(5)  That having regard to the revised timescales for the recommissioning of CSE support services, the benchmarking work carried out by members of the Improving Lives Select Commission that concluded in August 2019 be recommenced in order that it may feed into the development of the CSE Support Services needs analysis.

Councillors Jarvis and Senior re-joined the meeting at this point.