Alumni Webinar Insights

Our most recent Alumni Webinar February 2024, focussing on the investment in internal or in-house children’s residential homes by local authorities, was attended by many members of the network. Feedback highlighted this was a fantastic information sharing opportunity with support from IPC.

Sally Parkinson, Associate Director for Strategic Commissioning and Business Development for Achieving for Children said "It’s always great to hear from colleagues across the country to help with your own practice" .

Within the webinar we heard about national drivers including:

• Sufficiency
• Risks and challenges of provision including where children are placed geographically.

We then considered issues of:

• Profit and debt within the provider market
• The impact of political uncertainty and post-pandemic ways of working
• Wider workforce challenges.

Council input:

Oxfordshire County Council talked about their drivers for change with in-house provision, as well as the benefits to children and the workforce; joint working, and neighbourhood engagement.

Somerset Council outlined their provision, strategic partnerships, integration with therapeutic and educational provision; occupancy of homes, young people's engagement and impact on children's lives.

Attendee input:

Attendees discussed managing occupancy levels and voids within Council run children’s homes, and the importance of early buy-in and support from key stakeholders including senior leaders, planning colleagues and local neighbourhoods.

Thank you to our wonderful speakers, Caroline Kelly and Claire Lewis from Oxfordshire and Daniel Moncrieff and Julie Breeze from Somerset.

The slides and time-limited recordings of this webinar are available on the Online Forum for members of our IPC Commissioning Course Alumni Network.