Children’s and Emergency Support Services

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding supported living services commissioned by Devon County Council. Please provide the following information:

1. Commissioner and Placement Team Contact Details:
Please confirm who is in charge of overseeing children’s services, including their name, role, and contact information (email address and telephone number).
If the council operates a placement team or brokerage for children’s services, please provide the contact details of this team.

Information about our leadership team can be found at the following link Strategic Leadership Team.

Other personal information is exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (Personal Data). 

Devon County Council (DCC) can confirm the requested information is held; however, the Council cannot disclose personal information if releasing it would contravene any of the provisions in the UK General Data Protection Regulation. In this instance release of this information would contravene the first data protection principle and therefore the information is withheld.

We would encourage all enquiries to the council related to commissioning or placements to go to our dedicated mailbox, as these will be monitored Mon-Fri, with arrangements put in place for sickness or annual leave cover where needed. The contact details are:

Commissioning queries – childrenscommissioningsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

Placement queries – childrensplacements-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

2. Emergency Support or Crisis Needs for Children’s Services:
Does the council have a need for emergency support or crisis services for children and young people, where care providers are required to step in at short notice due to a lack of other provision?

Any provider interested in offering emergency support should contact the children’s commissioning mailbox childrenscommissioningsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk stating which area they are interested in provider (e.g. fostering, children’s home placements, floating support) so that the relevant commissioning officer can get in touch with them regarding need in that particular area.

In situations where no regulated services are available, does the council use unregulated providers to support?

DCC will try to avoid the use of unregulated providers for children in care wherever possible as this would be outside of the law for children in care and all efforts would be made to find a regulated placement. If no regulated placements are available then unregulated would be considered as a last resort and for the shortest possible amount of time until a suitable regulated placement can be found.

3. Number of Monthly Placements:
Can you provide the average number of placements made for children and young people each month over the last year? If possible, please provide a breakdown of the number of emergency placements versus planned placements.

Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. We are able to provide details of the number of new child placements (moves) each month for the past year, however it is not possible to identify those which are emergency placements without checking records manually. Across the year from 01/10/2023-30/09/2024 there are 1001 new placements in total, which would equate roughly to 1001 x 2 minutes per record = 2002 minutes = 33.37 hours.

In the interests of providing advice and assistance, the Council are able to provide a breakdown of placements by month and average across the year:

Average = 83.42 a month.

Please also note this may not account for some recent placement moves currently unrecorded.