Mutual Ventures has been appointed as the Department for Education’s delivery partner to establish two Regional Care Cooperatives, as well as deliver a programme of National Support on forecasting, commissioning and market shaping to local authorities across the country. David Fairhurst looks at why it is the right time for the programme and what it is seeking to achieve.
Over the last few decades there have been major shifts in the children’s care placement market with local authorities across the country facing a perfect storm of increasing demand for suitable placements for their most vulnerable children and insufficient supply to meet this growing need.
There have been several reports detailing the impact of these challenges in the children’s care placement market. The Competition and Market’s Authority report published in 2022 found that a lack of placements of the right kind, in the right places, means that children are not consistently getting access to care and accommodation that meets their needs (CMA, 2022). Many children are placed far away from where they would call home, often many miles from their friends, family, and community.
Regional Care Cooperatives
Building on recommendations from both the CMA report and The Independent Review of Social Care, the government’s latest policy paper Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive (2024) committed this government to enable local authorities to set up Regional Care Cooperatives to plan and commission children’s social care places at a regional level.
RCCs will gain economies of scale and harness the collective buying power of individual local authorities, facilitate greater collaboration with relevant partners, develop regional data analysis and forecasting functions to understand need, and provide a mechanism for local authorities to commission the type of placements they need.
Through this RCCs will support local areas to provide enough loving homes that meet their children’s needs in the right place at the right time.
Delivering change
As the DfE’s delivery partner, in April 2024 we started working alongside two regions, Greater Manchester and the South East. Each region has an ambition to address their local challenges in the children’s care placement market and we have supported them to build a programme to design and deliver their own RCC. We have taken each region through a co-design process to agree what functions the RCC will deliver and how it will operate, we have provided dedicated coaching, advice and challenge to each RCC and each RCC has also received specific support provided through our talented team of subject matter experts.
We will continue to support each RCC as they head towards ‘Go-Live’ with business cases, implementation planning, delivery activity, change management and technical expertise.
Within these two regions, there has been a lot of excitement for the potential of this programme and what could be achieved by the RCCs. The challenges are great but the ambition and urgency to do the best we can for children in care needs to be greater, and Greater Manchester and the South East have plenty of both!
If you would like to discuss the project or this topic in more detail, please email david@mutualventures.co.uk
For more information on the RCC programme including access to learning materials, further blog posts, and webinars, please visit Mutual Venture’s website here.
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