“I would like to know the minimum and maximum weekly cost of the below Placement types for Looked after Children placed in Residential Children’s Homes for the Financial Year 2018 -2019 supplied by Private or Voluntary Organisations;
Please provide a breakdown of Framework and Spot purchase price and how many of these placements have been made;
1a. Children with Moderate Learning Disabilities (LD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support.
1b Children with Moderate Learning Disabilities (LD) with one member of Staff to one Child level of support.
1c. Children with Moderate Learning Disabilities (LD) with two members of Staff to one Child level of support.
1d. Children with Moderate Learning Disabilities (LD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support and Full- time education provided 1e. Children with Moderate Learning Disabilities (LD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support and Full- time education and Therapy provided.
2a. Children with Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support.
2b Children with Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with one member of Staff to one Child level of support.
2c. Children with Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with two members of Staff to one Child level of support.
2d. Children with Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support and Full- time education provided 2e. Children with Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) with one member of Staff to two Children level of support and Full- time education and Therapy provided.”
The Council can confirm that it holds the minimum and maximum weekly costs of the above placement types but considers this information to be exempt from disclosure under Section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Commercial Interests’. Costs supplied would be higher than some of the prices that we pay for services within a high cost, competitive market, and 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.
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 in current and future arrangements through negotiation with providers, which is frequently required.
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.
Numbers of children placed according to the above categories are not held centrally. In order to locate, extract and retrieve this information we would need to manually check the Individual Placement Agreements (IPAs) for each child who has been subject to a high cost briefing for external residential care during 2018-19. To identify the total number of children in this category we would have to manually review hundreds of individual case files which we calculate would take well in excess of the 18 hours allowed under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Cost of Compliance’.