“Please can you provide a list of all ‘Semi Independent Care Home Providers’ used by young people aged between 16-21 approved for use by the Council, their full contact details and the amount spent with them.”
We have interpreted this question to refer to services provided to young people who are looked after and whom are care leavers. The type of service that has been referred to within our response is what is commonly referred to as ‘supported living for young people whom are in care’, however, these services provide support as opposed to care and so would not be considered to be ‘’Care Homes’’. These services are unregulated services meaning that they are not regulated by Ofsted or the Care Quality Commission, and instead are quality assured by any placing authority who wish to use the services.
For Devon County Council (DCC), these services would only be provided to children in care who are 16 and 17 years of age and should come to an end by, or close to, a young person’s 18th birthday dependent upon individual transition arrangements.
Supported Living providers used by DCC are quality assured by DCC. Please note that it is always the specific provision that will be used which will receive quality review. This means that where a provider has more than one provision, other provisions will not have been quality assured, and therefore not used. Simply this means that although a provider is listed below, this does not mean that all of their provisions and services are assessed or used by the Council.
The exception to the above arrangement is in the example of ‘Supported Lodgings’ where the provider is assessed in full.
Our answer does not include any information in relation to adults who may be supported or what may be considered supported living for homelessness prevention purposes which may include young people between the ages of 16 – 25 years who are not children in care but in some cases may be care leavers.
List of Providers pre-assessed for use by DCC and providers assessed due to a placement need being identified as part of a one-off arrangement are provided below:-
Parallel Care UK Ltd
Fusion Fostering Limited
Exchanges Ltd
Sixteen Plus
Monarch Intervention Services
Young Devon
Fusion Independence
MJ Support Staffing
CSM Independence Ltd
ISWP Assessment Services
Futur3s South West
Acorn Independence Limited
The Halfway Limited
The Leaving Care Company
Yazoo
Live West Homes Limited
Stepping Away From Care (SAFCA) Ltd
Light House Care
Higher Level World
Ambitions Support Ltd
Next Step Independence
Exeter YMCA
KPR Care Services
Birchwood
Stonewater
Westward Housing
Full contact details for the above are publicly available on the Companies House website, or alternatively on individual company websites.
The Council can confirm that it holds the amount spent with each of the above providers, but considers this information to be exempt under Section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Commercial Interests’. We believe that releasing this information would not be in the public’s best interests as it would negatively affect our ability as a purchaser of these services to achieve best value for money through negotiation with providers, which is frequently required.
Release of these figures within a high cost, competitive market, may lead to the increase of costs associated with these services. Release of this information would therefore be likely to prejudice the Council’s commercial interests.
All ‘spending over £500’ is, however, publicly available on the Devon County Council website should you wish to review this. This contains details of specific payments made to providers.