Contents
Foreword
There is no more important duty for society than to value and promote the importance and needs of our children and to protect and enable those who are vulnerable. Our commitment is to put children, young people and their families at the heart of everything we do, to enable them to have the best possible start in life.
Bradford Children and Families Trust has a critical role to play and has been set up to stabilise, recover and improve children’s services under new leadership – accountable to, but operationally independent from, Bradford Metropolitan District Council.
This is an important opportunity to establish our approach to delivering the support that Bradford District’s children, young people and families need, by improving services, establishing a new organisation and through it creating the conditions for success.
We are grasping that opportunity with both hands.
Moving colleagues and services into the Trust enables us to make a fresh start as an integrated team in a new organisation, with a clear purpose and a supportive culture. We will be building on the improvements that have been started under the current children’s services’ leadership.
We are bringing the mindset, dynamism and energy of a start-up together with the national expertise and determination of the Trust’s Board and senior leadership and our colleagues’ practical experiences of providing children’s services in Bradford District. Although we will have the independence of being a new organisation, which is wholly owned by the Council, we are committed to working in partnership with the Council. The Council will remain the accountable statutory body for children’s services and we are accountable to the Council for our outcomes. We are part of a multi-agency system with key partners, stakeholders and communities, and we are committed to being the best for and with Bradford District’s children.
We will build on our own expertise, best practice and recent improvements in children’s services, learning from what isn’t working and embracing the opportunity to do things differently. We know that our own colleagues in children’s services have a wealth of expertise and experience, they know the community they serve and they are therefore best placed to bring new ideas for improvements.
We will draw on this rich pool of knowledge and ideas as we co-produce our future improvements. We will also adopt and adapt best practice from elsewhere to work tirelessly to get it right for our children, young people and families, both as a Trust and by working collaboratively with the Council and the wide range of other partners with an important role to play in making Bradford District a safe, child-friendly and supportive city where every child matters and can grow up and thrive.
We want to identify and intervene early with families that are vulnerable or struggling because of life events, and work with them to identify the best way to support them, whether through a short-term issue or with longer-term vulnerabilities. We will build upon what currently works well and further embed a family-led decision-making practice model that will shift our approach and perceptions from doing things to families to working with families on a shared path.
We want to understand children and young people’s lived experience and ensure that they have a consistency of relationships and service and that they are involved in all the decisions that affect them. We will seek to walk in their shoes to see their world clearly and ask ourselves and them whether we are doing the right things to make it better.
By investing in and delivering high-quality services we will improve outcomes for all our children and young people. We recognise the need for outcomes to improve faster for children and young people, particularly for those who need extra support or protection.
We will create an effective and efficient organisation dedicated to the wellbeing of Bradford District’s children, young people and families, with outcomes-based accountability running through everything we do. Ultimately, we want the Trust – and Bradford – to become nationally-recognised as a progressive innovator in children’s services, where others come to learn what we’ve done to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.
We want to reflect the diversity, in all its forms, of the community we serve in the make-up of our workforce and ensure that we acknowledge, value, respect and promote diversity and inclusion, where everyone has a voice and can be themselves, in our policies, culture and behaviours.
This all requires a fearless and relentless focus and obsession on helping children and young people to progress, on understanding and responding to their needs, on standards, priorities and actions and on developing a culture that ensures we never lose sight of our purpose.
Chair of the Trust
Chief Executive
We are pleased to present the first Bradford Children and Families Trust Business Plan to set out how we are going to achieve this.
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Welcome and strategic context
We are pleased to present this initial business plan for Bradford Children and Families Trust for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 October 2023. This is our commitment for the first six months of working as a newly-formed organisation and it sets out our most important work to establish the Trust, stabilise our work, build the confidence of our workforce, progress the next stages of our comprehensive improvement plan and build our partnership relationships.
During this time, we will consult and engage with young people, our colleagues and our partners to establish a longer-term plan for the future and this will result in a refreshed Business Plan to be agreed with the Council for the period to April 2026. Subsequently, the Business Plan will be reviewed annually to make sure our plans remain right for the children and families of Bradford District.
Background
The Secretary of State for Education, Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Ofsted and Bradford’s Children’s Services Commissioner all agreed in early 2022 that, despite the efforts of the Council and the undoubted commitment of children’s social workers and other children’s services staff, the improvements needed to deliver consistently safe and effective children’s services cannot currently be achieved within the Council.
Therefore, the Council voluntarily agreed to set up a Trust, wholly owned by the Council, which would be commissioned to be responsible for running its services for children and young people. This new and operationally independent Trust will be known as the Bradford Children and Families Trust.
Having found Bradford District to be inadequate overall in 2018, Ofsted found children’s services in Bradford District to be inadequate in all areas in its December 2022 inspection. By this time, the Council had already agreed to the establishment of the Trust to deliver the improvements needed for our children, families and young people.
From 1 April 2023, the Trust will be commissioned by the Council to deliver a wide range of services for children, families and young people on their behalf. Bradford Council remains responsible for funding the Trust and retains statutory responsibility for the effective delivery of services for children and young people, while the Trust is accountable for determining how those outcomes are achieved and for the day-to-day running of those commissioned children’s services.
The Trust is operationally independent from the Council and is run by an Independent Board and executive team.
However, the Trust and Council are interdependent partners, heavily relying on each other to deliver improved outcomes for our children and young people.
But it also requires us and our strategic partners to engage, cooperate, collaborate and deliver together in pursuit of our common objectives and outcomes. This requires developing the right culture and building relationships and trust with our partners.
Overview of the Trust’s arrangements
The Trust has been established as a community interest company limited by guarantee, wholly owned by Bradford Council, initially commissioned for a period of five years to provide a long-term and sustainable platform to realise improved performance and deliver high-quality and innovative social care services to children, young people and their families within the Bradford Metropolitan District.
The Trust is a non-profit-distributing Teckal-compliant company that demonstrates day-to-day operational independence in the management and delivery of children’s social care services in Bradford District, through a strong Board of executive and non-executive directors.#
In conjunction with partner agencies, Bradford Council and the Trust will work together collaboratively to:
- promote the welfare of and safeguard children in line with key children’s legislation and statutory guidance
- provide family support to vulnerable children and their families to enable them to cope with difficulties
- support children to live safely with their immediate and extended families wherever possible
- meet the needs of looked after children and those leaving care
- support and enable disabled children and their families
The focus of the Trust and Bradford Council over the last year has been to work together to put the necessary contractual and operational arrangements in place to enable the successful establishment of the Trust by 1 April 2023.
These contractual relationships are managed through the following two groups.
Operational Joint Working Group
This provides monthly oversight of the Trust’s performance against the contract and the Council’s performance of any statutory functions and retained services that have a direct impact on the Trust service performance.
Strategic Joint Working Group
This provides strategic, political and executive oversight and scrutiny to the contractual agreement. It also formally considers and, where possible, resolves, any matters escalated to it by the Operational Group.
We have worked hard to establish supportive, trusting and effective relationships with Bradford Council as the owner, commissioner and key partner of the Trust.
The Trust’s performance and improvements are measured against an agreed performance regime. There are various elements of performance management and these include monitoring against the budget, business plan and key performance indicators set out in the contract (see the Service delivery section).
Detailed partnership governance arrangements are in place to ensure that statutory obligations are met. These include for example:
- Safeguarding Children Partnership
- Health and Wellbeing Board
- Youth Offending Service Board.
The Partnerships section provides more detail about Trust and Council accountabilities and contractual commitments.
National and local context
Bradford District has faced challenges in achieving and maintaining the required quality and consistency of its children’s services in recent years.
Demand for children’s social care services is rising nationally and while local authority spending has increased in response, this has not kept pace with demand. Nationally, there is a well-recognised set of challenges to social worker recruitment and retention, and the resultant reliance on more costly agency social workers. This picture is reflected in Bradford District. As a result, this contributes to further challenges to the quality and consistency of services, as acknowledged in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care report, published in May 2022.
Because the drivers of demand for children’s services are not unique, neither are the remedies. We can and will learn, adopt and adapt best practice from others who have faced and solved similar problems before us. Leeds children’s services, for instance, were also rated as ‘inadequate’ in 2009 and they turned around in a few short years to become regarded as among the very best in the country, while Wakefield also made rapid improvements to turn around an ‘inadequate’ rating in a 2018 inspection to ‘good’ by the end of 2021.
Bradford District does, however, have a more challenging local context than many other parts of the country. Bradford Metropolitan District Council is the fifth-largest metropolitan local authority district in England in terms of population and one of the youngest and most diverse places in the country. It is also ranked the fifth most income-deprived local authority in England. We know from national data that the risk of growing up in a family in poverty is highest for children from ethnic minorities (46%, compared with 26% of children in white British families), which is especially relevant given such a high proportion of Bradford District’s children are from an ethnic minority background.
Bradford District has been hit harder than the national average by Covid, the cost-of-living crisis and high inflation, because the lowest-income groups spend a higher proportion of their income on basics like energy, food, clothing and housing.
There are also large health inequalities: the poorest children can expect to live shorter and less-healthy lives than those born into the wealthiest families and children with learning difficulties and mental ill health also have a significantly shorter life expectancy than children without either. Poorer children are nine times more likely to suffer an adverse childhood experience and ten times more likely to require a child protection plan or enter care.
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Who we are: the Trust’s vision and purpose
We will achieve this through continuous improvements in our services and positive collaboration with our staff and our partner organisations, putting children, young people and their families at the heart of all that we do.
To find out more, see our vision and values.
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Strategic priorities
Successive government reviews and inspections have found that Bradford has not provided consistently safe and effective services for children and young people in our community or in our care.
While Ofsted’s 2023 inspection report rated Bradford District as ‘inadequate’ on every measure. Ofsted also noted that: “It is evident that social workers are committed to doing their best for children,” and the Children’s Services Commissioner’s 2022 report said: “It is important to note that in all my sessions with staff they also emphasised that there were a lot of positives about Bradford District and that they were keen to support improvement and good outcomes for children.”
The Trust will build on the areas of improvement that have been achieved over the past 15 months by the leadership of Children’s Services, which Ofsted has acknowledged, especially in the integrated front door, exploitation hub and early help, and in “the visibility of managers and… greater sense of calm and clarity of direction”.
Our strategic priorities for 2023-24
To address the most urgent issues highlighted by the Ofsted report, in our first year we have identified seven strategic priorities linked to the Improvement Plan:
1. Retain, recruit and develop our workforce
We will co-produce a People and Culture Plan that aims to attract and retain a permanent workforce of experienced social workers and other professional staff that increasingly reflects the demography of Bradford District and promotes proactive career development opportunities, alongside best practice for our children and families, so that:
- Children and young people can develop meaningful relationships with social workers
- Social workers can fully understand children’s histories, presenting risks and where some children and young people are experiencing chronic neglect and unmet need
- All children and young people have complete and up-to-date assessments and plans
- Social workers have acceptable caseloads, stable and effective management oversight, support, supervision and accountability and decision-making
- All colleagues experience a strong, values-based working environment, within which their skills are developed and career opportunities are evident
- The partnership between – and operational delivery of – social work will be further developed with other crucial parts of children’s services and with partners.
2. Further develop high-quality, relationship-based practice
We will have a relentless focus on the further development of high-quality relationship-based practice, providing value-for-money coordinated services in relation to children’s safeguarding, children in care and at the edge of care, children leaving care, and adoption and fostering services, so that:
- Social workers can take full account of a child’s needs and family circumstances via effective assessments, to focus plans on the right level of care and support, so that all children feel and are safe and have the opportunity to reach their full potential
- The voice of the child and the family are captured and that they are involved in all the decisions that affect them
- Effective care planning and appropriate intervention is in place to protect children from harm, reducing the need for children to be in
care unless absolutely necessary, and supports those in care and care leavers - Statutory interventions and child protection plans are ended appropriately, with clear, ongoing support arrangements in place as necessary
- Multi-agency meetings have the right information to make decisions and progress plans for positive change for children and young people and minimise drift and delay
- Restorative, relationship-based practice is embedded as a way of working though effective training, supervision and team work
- The value and impact of early help services is fully recognised and developed to meet more needs early and reduce the need for children’s social care to become involved
- Quality assurance arrangements inform practitioners, managers and leaders of the quality of work being undertaken, the areas to celebrate, the areas to improve and the impact on the children and families we serve.
3. Establish high-quality leadership
We will establish a strong leadership culture and build long-term stability and trust in the senior leadership team, with a clear vision, clear responsibilities and a coherent approach, so that:
- All leaders and managers understand the scale of improvements needed, the plan and their responsibility within it, and the time it will take to deliver
- Leaders (including within the Council) act as strong and effective corporate parents
- Staff have confidence in the direction, expertise and decision-making of senior leaders and the spine of leadership within the Trust
- Partner agencies have confidence in children’s services, particularly in relation to schools and the courts.
4. Strengthen multi-agency partnership and strategy
We will build, strengthen and renew relationships and trust with our strategic and delivery partners and Bradford Safeguarding Partnership Board to ensure that children and young people experience agencies that work together at both an individual and strategic level, so that:
- There is a clear, agreed vision and co-produced strategies that are owned by all partners and collectively driven by leaders at a strategic level
- Children and young people have access to a range of high-quality support and services delivered by practitioners working together on the ground
- The Trust can lead where appropriate, and make a positive and effective contribution to, multi-agency early intervention, to avoid the need for more intensive social care support.
5. Develop a new corporate infrastructure including Trust in-house corporate support
We will develop our corporate infrastructure and our in-house corporate services functions to ensure that children’s services colleagues receive effective corporate support services, which are also focused on children’s outcomes, most notably in finance, HR and ICT, so that:
- Frontline social staff can get the right day-to-day support, with the equipment, systems and processes that enable them to operate effectively
- Corporate colleagues understand the pressures on managers in children’s services and can tailor their advice, systems and processes to provide the support required
- The interface with services still delivered by the Council is clear and effective.
6. Deliver continuous improvement through our Improvement Plan
We will deliver on our actions in the updated Children’s Services Improvement Plan, which takes on board the most recent Ofsted findings, so that:
- All partners know what is required, who is responsible and where we need to work together
- Leaders, managers and partners focus on progress towards outcomes
- Managers support teams to build on the basics and innovate to deliver improvements
- Improved data quality, analysis and record keeping provide a comprehensive picture of the needs of children, young people and families to inform the actions we take to support them
- Outcomes-based performance measurement and quality management systems provide senior leaders with a good understanding of what the data is telling them, to facilitate further improvement.
7. Build an effective and efficient organisation
We will put in place the key organisational building blocks to improve corporate resilience and impact and to ensure robust and effective resource management so that:
- We have robust and impactful arrangements for commissioning, including commissioning undertaken with our partners, to ensure best use of our resources to better meet the needs of children and young people, especially those with the most complex needs
- Simple and effective arrangements are in place for decision making, as close to the front line as possible.
- We can effectively review of the Trust’s budget to help us to understand the key drivers of the budget, align our investment to our greatest areas of need and to ensure we have the robust foundations to develop a meaningful Medium-Term Financial Plan
- Budget managers are equipped with support and systems to effectively monitor and forecast
- We create a culture of shared budget responsibility for ensuring that every pound spent is maximising positive outcomes for children and young people in line with budget control processes.
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Service delivery improvements
Our day-to-day operational delivery responsibilities have been agreed with the Council in our contract arrangements. The Trust is responsible for determining the strategy and objectives for how those outcomes are achieved and for the day-to-day running of children’s services.
These services are supported and enabled by the Trust’s corporate support services outlined in Appendix 2, supplemented by services contracted from the Council through service level agreements or procured from external suppliers.
Service improvements
The main improvements we will strive for, for our children, young people and families, are:
- We will work earlier with families to understand when they are struggling, so we can help prevent them from falling into crisis, by collaborating more closely with partner agencies to better spot the early signs that help is needed.
- We will continue to develop the strength of our early help system to reduce the need for families to become involved with social care and explore the concept of ‘Family Help’ for Bradford District, as defined in the government’s response to the Children’s Social Care Review.
- We will ensure that children and young people have a voice, that we listen to them to understand their lived experience, investing in advocacy arrangements and working with grassroots organisations to ensure that they are properly listened to and heard.
- We will adopt a relationship-based, restorative practice model, to shift our approach and perceptions from doing things to families to working alongside families on a shared path.
- We will ensure that children, young people and families have continuity and consistency in their relationship with social workers, by building a stable, permanent workforce of social workers, reducing our reliance on agency staff and reducing staff turnover.
- We will promote a ‘Family First’ approach to enable families to care for their children where safe to do so, including the further development of our early help offer.
- We will continue the development of our services to support those young people who are exposed to safeguarding risks outside the home.
- We will ensure that our children and young people in care have more continuity and consistency in their schooling, by working more closely with Bradford District’s schools to ensure they understand each child’s needs and circumstances and can provide the right support for them.
- We will ensure that personal education plans (PEPs) for children and young people in care are consistently completed, reflect ambition for what children and young people in care can achieve and that they happen.
- We will ensure that our children and young people in care have stability in their relationship with the families they are placed with and constantly ask ourselves “Would this be good enough for my child?” in the support and care that we offer.
- We will promote Bradford District as a fostering-friendly authority and increase the number and diversity of our foster carers, supporting them well to meet the needs of our children in care.
- We will work towards not needing to place children and young people out of the area unless this is necessary for their safeguarding, through further development of our own residential provision and our “Family First” approach.
- We will work with older teenage children in care to make sure they are safe and cared for and help them to identify opportunities for further education, training, apprenticeships and employment.
- We will assure and where necessary improve the quality and safety of in-house residential provision and ensure that the recruitment of adults involved in residential care is safe.
- We will offer safe, appropriate and sustainable homes for care leavers and engage early with adult social care colleagues to support their preparation for leaving care.
- We will ensure that children and young people leaving care will have at least two adults who will maintain a long-term relationship with them, to provide ongoing love, support, advice and a friendly ear.
- We will work with partners to ensure that children and young people are involved in and benefit from all city cultural, social and economic initiatives – including Bradford City of Culture 2025.
Implementing the Improvement Plan
A revised, more focused and streamlined Children’s Services Improvement Plan 2022-24 was developed and agreed in October 2022 and it includes a wide range of actions and outcomes that the Trust is responsible for delivering. The plan is currently being updated to ensure that it demonstrates how it will act on the specific areas for action identified by Ofsted, and a response to Ofsted is required by 15th May.
We will work with leaders, managers and colleagues in Children’s Services to ensure that the updated plan captures the Trust’s views, since delivery of many of those improvements is our responsibility.
We have committed to an agreed set of core indicators by which to monitor our progress.
| № | Measure | Statistical Neighbour (2022) | Bradford’s Current Performance | Target Performance Yr 1 | Target Performance Yr 2 | Target Performance Yr 3 | Tolerance +/- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | % of all referrals with a decision within 24 hours | N/A | 64% (12 months to Feb 23) | 78% | 80% | 85% | 2% |
| 2 | % of referrals with a previous referral within 12 months | 21% | 26% | 15% – 25% | 15% – 25% | 15% – 25% | 2% |
| 3 | % of Single Assessments completed within 45 working days | 86% | 81% | 85% | 87% | 89% | 5% |
| 4 | % of Initial Child Protection Conferences held within 15 days of a strategy discussion being initiated | 87% | 44% | 75% | 88% | 90% | 12% |
| 5 | % of children that became the subject of a Child Protection Plan for the second or subsequent time | 23% | 23% | 18% – 28% | 18% – 28% | 18% – 28% | 2% |
| 6 | % of young people now aged 17–21 and living in a suitable accommodation who were looked after when aged 16 | 91% | 89% | 91% | 94% | 95% | 2% |
| 7 | % of young people now aged 17–21 and in employment, education or training who were looked after when aged 16 | 51% | 53% | 60% | 65% | 70% | 10% |
| 8 | % of young offenders that re-offend | 30% | 28% (Dec 2020) | N/A | 27% | 26% | 1% |
| 9 | Closest national indicator % of children subject to Child Protection Plans for two years or more as of 31 March | 2% | 3% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 0.5% |
| 10 | Step downs to Early Help | N/A | 1,119 children (12 months to Dec 2022) | 1230 | 1354 | 1489 | 5% |
| 11 | Contacts received to the Integrated Front Door | N/A | 34,641 (12 months to Feb 2023) | ||||
| 12 | 3+ placement moves | 8.7% | 8% | 7.5% | 7% | 6.5% | 0.5% |
| 13 | Children missing from home/care | 10% | 9% | 8% | 8% | 8% | 1% |
| 14 | First time entrants to YJS | 167 (Q4 2022) | 195 (Q4 2022) | 190 | 185 | 180 | 3% |
| 15 | % of stage 1 complaints dealt with within statutory timeframes | 61% | 65% | 70% | 80% | 2% | |
| 16 | % of Agency social workers (inc SM, TM, PS, CC, CPC, IRO) as a % of permanent social worker roles | 48% | Less than 48% | 30% | 20% | 2% | |
| 17 | Budget % variances (forecast to budget) | N/A | Nil Variance | Nil Variance | Nil Variance | Any Variance needs to be agreed with the Council | |
| 18 | Evidence of actions to ensure continued progress which promptly addresses challenges expressed by the Inspectors across all Ofsted inspection frameworks | N/A | Good Progress | Good Progress | Full ILAC Inspection outcome RI or better | Sufficient / adequate progress |
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People and culture
We know that our staff truly care about children, young people and families, and they care about Bradford District too. We will develop a culture in the Trust that empowers our staff and enables them to thrive and flourish.
We will make changes with a clear purpose – the relentless pursuit of improvements to ensure safe and effective services for our children, young people and families: we are not changing just to be different from what went before.
It won’t be an overnight transformation, but the necessary changes and improvements we are putting in place all aim to make it easier for our colleagues to do their jobs well. We will also show them that they are valued and respected as caring professionals and we will support them to achieve both the best outcomes in their work and their personal potential.
The Trust will set high standards, because that is what we all want to achieve and what our children, young people and families deserve. But there is no magic wand: we will achieve this through a myriad of small actions across our services that will stabilise them; we will fix the basics and only then will we have the solid foundations on which to build better services.
This is an opportunity for us to build on the best we have, learn from what isn’t working and make a fresh start as an integrated team in a new organisation, with a clear purpose and supportive culture, so we can get it right for our children, young people and families.
We are in charge of our own destiny in our own organisation. It won’t be easy or quick, but these are career-defining challenges and opportunities for us all to turn around and reshape how Bradford District cares for our most vulnerable children, young people and families.
This section explores what we need to do, and specific actions are set out in the detailed Year 1 plan for people and culture transformation in Appendix 5.
One team
We are one team – the team that Bradford District’s children, young people and families rely on to support them at times of greatest need – so we will think as a team and act as a team. The eyes of our community, of our children, young people and families, of partners, politicians and media, and of national government are upon us. Working together, we will turn our services around and earn their trust, support and admiration, working as one team across the totality of children’s services.
A new culture
This will involve a shift in culture – all of us working together to achieve our shared vision, living the values and behaviours that we will develop together in a People and Culture Plan over the first six months. Our culture must support us to be tirelessly focused on putting the needs of children and young people first, by collaborating and cooperating, speaking up when there are problems and solving them together, breaking down barriers between teams, being respectful, honest and open with each other and with our stakeholders, celebrating success and regaining pride and confidence in what we do and how we do it for our community.
We will involve colleagues at all levels in co-creating the People and Culture Plan, as well as in the formal governance for the development of the plan, so that it is genuinely owned by all of us. The People and Culture Plan is a three-year plan, which will go hand in hand with the business plan and will be overseen by the Trust Board.
Rebuilding trust
We must be clear about what we’re doing, deliver what we promise and keep everyone informed about our progress – and any setbacks and failures we experience and learn from – along the way.
Only by being clear, open and transparent can we build trust and confidence among our new colleagues – let alone among children and young people, families, partners and stakeholders.
We will therefore fully involve colleagues and keep them properly informed about the changes that are happening and what it means for them, their work and for the children, young people and families they support.
Securing a stable workforce
A stable workforce is critical to our efforts to improve services, so we will develop an attractive offer as a Trust that will support the recruitment and retention of experienced permanent social workers. This is an urgent priority for HR and the Trust’s leadership.
We know that pay and reward is often the most important factor in recruitment and retention, but it is far from the only factor, especially in public services. For many of us, working in children’s services is as much a vocation as it is a job – though that doesn’t mean we should be taken for granted. Being part of a culture in which we are valued, respected, recognised, listened to, supported and developed to meet our potential all influence our job satisfaction, our resilience and our decision about whether to stay or leave.
The Council has already put several improvements in place to involve colleagues in shaping the future and show that they are valued and we will continue this work. We will also focus on training and career development and a range of other areas that contribute to making a great place to work, which are summarised below.
We will carry out a staff engagement survey within the first three months, giving all colleagues the opportunity to give honest views about what is good and not good in all aspects of their work. We want to understand how colleagues are feeling and identify priorities for action and track improvements against this initial benchmark. We will also carry out exit interviews to better understand why some colleagues are leaving.
To accelerate recruitment we will appoint a dedicated recruitment manager at the earliest opportunity, to reenergise and refocus our efforts to attract experienced colleagues, and establish an effective and engaging recruitment process and onboarding experience.
We will also use the creation of the Trust to raise our profile positively – through media and social media, recruitment fairs, webinars with the Board and senior colleagues and other channels. We will talk about our vision, goals, priorities and the career-defining challenges and opportunities the Trust offers to work with nationally-recognised, experienced leaders in shaping our new and ambitious organisation. We will be ready to receive applications from interested individuals and deal with these quickly and professionally.
Diversity and inclusion
We will seek to reflect the diversity in all its forms of the community we serve in the make-up of our workforce and ensure that we acknowledge, value and respect diversity and inclusion, where everyone has a voice and can be themselves, in our policies, culture and behaviours.
We will engage with the Council’s diversity networks as we support the establishment of networks in the Trust, and draw on the expertise, views and interests of members of networks to inform how we celebrate our diversity.
Creating consistent leadership
We will end the high rate of turnover of senior leaders and bring stability to children’s services senior leadership. Stable senior leadership is crucial for the future conditions for success.
Leaders and managers will be strongly supported by the Board, who will share their considerable experience and expertise in both strategy and operational services, providing a new leadership dimension and establishing a clear spine of leadership at all levels within the Trust.
Leaders and managers are responsible for creating the conditions in which colleagues can succeed. We will ensure that leaders and managers live the values and behaviours of the Trust, being visible and supportive to their teams. Key among these behaviours are respecting, valuing, listening to and trusting colleagues to do the right thing.
We expect leaders and managers to set clear expectations and ensure that their teams understand the changes that are taking place. We expect them to support, coach and trust colleagues to do their jobs and develop, helping them to deal with issues and solve problems that arise; effective oversight and supervision should not mean continually monitoring and micromanaging team members.
We will distribute responsibility and decision making down to the most appropriate level, empowering and supporting managers and colleagues to have the confidence to act, knowing there is a safety net to catch them if they make a mistake.
Leaders and managers at all levels also have a responsibility to call out and escalate issues, not sit on them, challenge senior leaders constructively where they believe the wrong decisions are being made, and to ensure that the organisation is resourced effectively.
We will set out more details about these expected behaviours as we develop the People and Culture Plan.
Structure and line management
With the exception of some new senior leadership arrangements, we’re not planning an immediate restructure of operational services or line management responsibilities, although there will be more significant changes for the small number of colleagues transferring from the Council’s corporate services into new management arrangements. This is because, in the first weeks and months, it is critical to have continuity and the minimum of disruption for colleagues and the children, young people and families we support. However, we have recruited and are recruiting new senior leaders in the executive team into whom the transferred teams will report.
Over time we will review our structure to ensure that we are organised efficiently and optimally to provide the best outcomes for children and young people. We will ensure that managers and colleagues have the opportunity to contribute to any future developments.
Training and development
We will invest in continuous professional and personal development to help colleagues to fulfil their potential and progress in their careers. Wherever possible, we will draw our future managers and leaders from within the Trust, growing our own talent pool and harnessing their knowledge and experience.
We will ensure that all colleagues have a personal development plan by the end of the first three months. This must be owned by them and actively supported by their line manager, with regular reviews to discuss progress and what support they need.
Performance
We will develop a performance management system, with outcomes-based performance objectives agreed for all colleagues within the first three months. Those objectives should have a clear line of sight to – and feed into – team and Trust objectives and performance.
There will also be a formal mid-year check-in review and an annual appraisal, and managers and colleagues will hold a monthly, one-to-one meeting which will focus on constructive feedback, recognising achievements and identifying and supporting colleagues in areas for improvement. It will also be an opportunity to discuss other issues, such as wellbeing.
We will set clear expectations of the standards that we need to attain and maintain.
At a Trust level, we will be open and transparent about our collective performance against our objectives and the actions we’re taking to improve services and outcomes.
We will constantly appraise what we are doing to ensure that it is aligned to our goals and delivering the right outcomes.
Building a new organisation
An essential part of our focus on people and culture will be manifest in the development of a new organisational infrastructure, including the development of corporate services functions, dedicated to our purpose of ensuring safe and effective services for children and young people.
Some of these will be delivered through service level agreements with the Council and some through the new Trust corporate infrastructure.
The Trust provides the opportunity to develop processes and practices tailored to direct support of children’s social care while maintaining proper standards of governance. Our support services and the protocols put in place should be enabling colleagues to do their jobs, not getting in the way.
By investing in the skills and capability of the corporate team of the Trust, across disciplines of HR, finance and dedicated ICT, procurement, performance and complaints, marketing and communications, executive support data and governance services we will be able to shape and deliver the corporate support we need, learning lessons from the experience of the past few years.
While we will endeavour to provide our own services wherever possible, in order to minimise disruption and ensure continuity and maximise best value there are several functions – including ICT, payroll and other HR systems, internal audit, facilities management, caretaking and cleaning – that we will secure under contract from Bradford Council through service level agreement arrangements or from other providers. These arrangements will have formalised with Service Level Agreements setting out the required levels of service and performance.
We will work with Council and Trust colleagues in designing the improvements we need to make, as part of the Trust Development Plan and review and reform processes that get in the way of colleagues doing their jobs – such as the number of levels of approval needed to sign off recruitment. We will also make it a priority for our ICT colleagues to resolve technical barriers to efficient working, such as ensuring that colleagues have the right hardware and connectivity.
Wellbeing and resilience
Personal wellbeing and resilience are important, so we will ensure that colleagues – and especially those in the front line dealing with difficult cases – have good personal support, with the opportunity to talk, be listened to and have a place to regroup.
We will develop a wellbeing package as part of the People and Culture Plan.
Reward and recognition
One of our key commitments is in respect of our colleagues’ terms and conditions. The Trust’s position is there will be no detriment to terms and conditions and would want to look at opportunities to improve them. This means that the Trust will honour existing terms and conditions and any future changes to these, as determined through the National Joint Council’s annual settlement process.
Innovation
As part of our transformation programme, we will be seeking innovative ways to improve what we do. We will adopt and adapt best practice ideas from others and actively scan the horizon for the newest innovations in children’s service provision. But we also know we have committed and expert colleagues with local knowledge and experience with ideas of their own, that we want and need to tap into.
We will develop and implement a slick process for colleagues to bring forward ideas for improving services, processes and outcomes and securing efficiencies.
We will set up a Trust Innovation Group to which colleagues can bring their ideas and know that they will be listened to and their suggestions properly considered, trialled and taken forward (where appropriate and feasible), with proper feedback, recognition and celebration.
Communication and engagement
Actively informing and engaging with colleagues is a key component of ensuring that the Trust is a great place to work. We will build on the improvements that have already been made by the interim leadership and apply some basic principles in how we communicate and engage as a Trust:
We will always tell colleagues first about anything that affects them
- We will be open and honest and not seek to sugar-coat or fudge difficult issues
- We will share as much information as we can, as early as possible. If we don’t have the complete picture, we will explain this and say when we will be able to provide more information
- We will listen to colleagues and involve them in the changes we make
- We will recognise good work and celebrate success.
We set out in more detail how we will communicate and engage internally with colleagues and externally with children, young people and families, partners and other stakeholders in a Trust Communications and Engagement Strategy.
Transformation
Through the Trust Development Plan we will drive a programme of transformation to ensure that we align our financial and workforce resources with our strategy – to reverse the increase in the number of children and young people being taken into care by supporting families to keep children and young people safe in their homes, wherever possible, through more effective early help and prevention.
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Partnerships
Children and young people in the district require agencies and organisations to work together with common purpose if they are to get the help they need. The Trust is committed to being an engaged, reliable and effective partner.
Agencies and partners must work together at both a strategic and operational delivery level to ensure that children and young people have access to a range of high-quality support and joined-up services. We will only be successful if all partners work together across the district towards the same outcomes.
This is both about co-creating a shared strategy and in day-to-day co-operation to improve the effectiveness of all multi-agency meetings and the timeliness and quality of plans, decisions and actions in relation to individual children and their families.
The Trust is committed to this approach. We will act as a convenor of voices for Bradford District regarding children and young people; we will listen to and support partners in their goals and endeavours; and we will make changes in our own approach and systems to support this.
Ofsted highlights that Children’s Services has begun constructively to engage partner agencies to support the improvement work, especially in operational delivery. The Trust will rapidly build on these improving relationships. In so doing, we will seek a shared understanding of the circumstances of children and young people for identifying and supporting children, young people and families in need of help, moving well beyond a transactional relationship into one of genuine partnership, trust and shared responsibility.
Strategic partnership forums
The Trust is involved in the following range of statutory and strategic forums:
- Bradford Safeguarding Children Partnership
- Ofsted and Bradford Children’s Commissioners
- Children and Young People Trust Executive
- Children’s Social Care Improvement Board
- Health and Wellbeing Board
- Youth Offending Board
- Local Family Justice Board
- Corporate Parenting Board
- Community Safety Partnership
- Youth Justice Board
- SEND Strategic Board
The Trust is committed to being fully involved and playing an active role in these strategic forums, with genuine collaboration and integrated working, in the interests of securing the best outcomes for children, young people and families.
Strategic delivery partners
We work with and rely on a wide range of delivery partners to wrap support around children, young people and families with joined-up services. These include:
Early Years providers
We will continue to build constructive and cooperative operational relationships with all early years providers.
Foster carers, One Adoption and adoptive parents
We will nurture a relationship of open, honest communication between our services and foster carers and adoptive parents, beyond what is required by law. We will also work to improve foster carer morale, training, recruitment and retention, including the support offered to special guardians.
Schools and colleges
We will continue to build constructive and cooperative operational relationships with all schools and colleges. We will ensure that they understand the needs and circumstances of vulnerable children, children and young people in care and leaving care, including children and young people with neurodiversity, learning disabilities and mental ill health, so that they can properly support all children and young people to achieve their potential. We will work in partnership on how to support them in their roles.
We will continue to work closely with the University of Bradford, which plays a key role in the education of new social workers at degree level, and the continuing professional development of qualified social workers through its masters in social work and other postgraduate courses.
Bradford Council Adult Social Services
We will ensure there is a close and effective working relationship with adult social care services, particularly in relation to preparing for children’s transition to adulthood, children and young people at risk of parental mental health, substance misuse, children and young people with disabilities and domestic abuse. Communication, cooperation and collaboration between the Trust and adult social services is critical to achieving the best service outcomes for children and young people in both childhood and adult life.
Children’s Services in the Council
We will continue to work as one seamless children’s service, together with those services still delivered by the Council such as education and special educational needs arrangements. The mutual dependencies will be developed through our working arrangements and shared priorities for children, young people and families.
NHS Integrated Care System, health providers and partners
We will improve our engagement and collaboration with public health partners to integrate our services, recognising the critical importance of children’s health to their overall wellbeing, especially in prevention, where health inequalities are significant factors in children’s circumstances.
Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership have recently established children and young people as one of their five new strategic priorities, with a director being recruited to lead the work in this area across four pillars – better births, prevention, pathways and services, and complex care. We will actively engage with the partnership on how we deliver our overlapping responsibilities.
West Yorkshire Police
We will work to ensure an effective working relationship with police services, based on mutual trust, including on our integrated front door arrangements and safeguarding services, including properly involving them in section 47 investigations.
Chamber of Commerce and local businesses
We will actively engage with the business community to encourage them to understand their role in supporting children and young people. Family-friendly work environments, such as flexible working arrangements, can help families to meet the needs of their families, while active support for employees at times of family stress can help them deal with life events and vulnerabilities.
Businesses in the community can also help identify vulnerable children and young people and raise concerns with children’s services, so we will ensure they understand what to look for and how to flag their concerns.
Businesses can also support community groups that focus on children, young people and families, such as through financial sponsorship and with time off for employees to volunteer with groups and develop career and learning opportunities for our more vulnerable young people and our care leavers.
Voluntary and community sector (VCS) partners
We want to promote a healthy and engaged voluntary sector that provides good quality services for local people. We will build on our operational relationships with VCS partners by involving them as partners in the development and evolution of our strategy and by working closely with smaller grassroots community organisations to help engage with and support children, young people and families from diverse backgrounds.
Strategic dependencies with the Council
The Trust has a particular set of strategic dependencies with the Council and is committed to working in a positive and collaborative manner to be open and transparent about work undertaken and progress made via our agreed governance arrangements.
We are also committed to seeking constructive resolutions when challenges arise.
The Trust is dependent on the Council for:
Effective delivery of services provided to the Trust through service
level agreements
- Acting on inspection findings that relate to Council activities
- Working in partnership to meet the needs of children through retained areas of business, including education, adult social care and place planning and capital resources
- Access to grant funding as available
- Property management information transfer
- Assets and supply contracts
- Working as a partner in line with agreed Joint working protocols.
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Financial strategy
This section sets out the Trust’s financial strategy and plan and the budget for the period between 1 April and 30 October 2023 in line with the one-year contract sum agreed with the Council for our first operational year. The Business Plan will be refreshed by November 2023.
The core financial strategy of the Trust is to achieve improvements in services whilst also moving towards a more stable long-term financial position.
The Trust’s financial position will be driven by the outcomes and aspirations in this plan, informed by modelling the demand for services from children, young people and families, and by the investment needed in Trust support services to enable frontline workers to do their jobs well. This triple-track approach of improving children services, enabling support services and establishing the culture for the Trust to succeed has been the context for the contract sum negotiated with Bradford Council and the Department for Education.
The Trust will establish robust mechanisms to carefully monitor spend and savings over the period of the plan. It is clear that the coming years will continue to be financially challenging, given the ongoing pressures on wider public sector budget and national increases in the levels of demand for children’s services. The Trust will work closely with the Council to ensure a mutual understanding of existing and emerging pressures and to reach agreement on the level of funding appropriate in line with our contractual arrangements.
The majority of the Trust’s funding comes from the Council and this forms the core contract funding for the Trust to deliver children’s social care on the Council’s behalf. The Council will also passport specific grants, such as those relating to public health, youth services and supported families, through to the Trust as part of the contract mechanism.
In addition, the Trust will be supported by a grant from the Department for Education in 2023-24 to fund the Trust’s operating costs and specific improvement activities, in line with the business case agreed by the Department. Some of the resources needed will be short term in nature, while the transformation programme is established and begins to deliver early benefits. Some will need to be retained in the longer term to ensure that the necessary transformation and improvement is embedded, continuous and successful.
In line with our Articles of Association, the Trust’s overarching financial aim is to ensure that resources are adequate to support outcomes for children and families, transformation and improvement plans and to provide a platform for financial sustainability. This will involve Council and Trust working together to ensure appropriate levels of investment in our workforce, buildings and technology over the course of the medium term, as well as looking to other ways of generating income and support for the Trust in line with the Trusts objectives. In doing this we will demonstrate value for money and returns on investment.
The robust financial planning of the Trust will support the delivery of the Council’s budget to enable the Council to deliver its statutory duties when setting its budget. The Trust will follow three overarching financial principles in line with our Articles of Association:
1. Maximising resources available to frontline services
The Trust will undertake regular budget reviews to ensure that resources available to frontline services are maximised and that there is a sufficient balance to provide frontline services with the necessary infrastructure to continue to support children and families.
The following four aspects are important in achieving this objective:
- Adequate needs-led budget growth and achievement of savings
- Maximising income generation
- Periodic review of emerging priority areas
- Ensuring that business plan and transformation programmes facilitate the effective use of resources.
2. Shared budget responsibility
The Trust will develop a culture of shared budget responsibility, with all staff being responsible for ensuring that every pound spent is maximising positive outcomes for children and young people, and that spending is in line with budget control processes.
3. Best value
The Trust will innovate and secure improvements in the quality and effectiveness of the services provided to children, young people and their families in respect of social care, family support and youth offending services, having regard to the ‘best value duty’.
The Trust will maximise economies of scale through both the delivery and procurement of services. Key priorities will be the effective commissioning of placements and the recruitment and retention of a highly-skilled workforce. The service delivery improvements set out in Section 4 will improve practice over the life of the contract improve practice which should lead to efficiencies and reductions in costs and contribute to best value.
The Trust will undertake benchmarking to ensure that services are delivered efficiency and effectively, exploring the use of innovative models and best practice.
Key elements of our developing financial strategy, with direct link to the service delivery improvements set out in Section 4 include:
Ongoing risk assessment of changes in demand led pressures
- Gaining a detailed understanding of cost and spend through thorough budget review
- Improved social work practice with families to help children live safely at home
- More focused and effective commissioning and procurement
- Increased use of internal fostering placements
- Reducing our use of residential placements
- Reduction in agency spend as a result of increased permanency in the workforce
- Maximising income generation and opportunities for external funding
- Smarter and more effective systems, process, decision making and governance
- Review of frontline business management and support.
Changes to the contract sum
Any required changes to the contract sum will be made in line with the contractual mechanisms and the Trust will work closely with the Council in a situation where any in-year changes are required.
The contract sum in any year may require adjustments (upwards or downwards) as a result of any errors and/or omissions in its calculation which were not apparent prior to the date on which the relevant contract sum was determined.
The Trust will work closely with the Council in a situation where any in-year changes to the contract sum need to be considered and changes will be agreed in line with the contract mechanisms, namely:
a. Where there has been an increase is demand for the service and/or an additional cost to the Trust that could not reasonably have been anticipated when the overall budget for the relevant contract year was agreed (a Type One in-year change), and/or
b. Where i) the Trust has a business case which would require an increase to the contract sum but would deliver an improvement to the services, or ii) the Trust wishes to make an ‘invest to save’ proposal which would require an increase to the contract sum in the short term, but would pay back to the Council in terms of a future reduction in the contract sum (a Type Two in-year change).
The Trust can also submit to the Council requests for additional costs that may be incurred by the Trust as a result of work that the Council requires the Trust to do as part of the Annual Review.
On or before 30 October in each contract year the Trust and Council shall work together to agree subsequent contract sums, aligned with the Annual Review process, and will take into account a number of factors including, the Trust business plan, Council overall funding, any pay awards and agreed staffing changes, pension contribution rates, service costs and demand and costs of support service SLAs, third party contracts and property costs.
Following the first Annual Review with the Council, prior to 1 October 2023, a revised business plan will be developed which will set out a revised three-year Medium-Term Financial Plan. In developing our Medium-Term Financial Plan, the focus will be on achieving financial stability and will closely align our strategic priorities with our financial priorities and demonstrate robust financial planning.
In determining the Trust’s budget, and the funding from the Council for 2023-24 necessary to meet the business plan priorities and objectives for this first year of the contract, working collaboratively the Trust and the Council agreed a partnership and risk-based approach. The Trust is wholly-owned subsidiary of Bradford Council and the Trust’s financial position is underpinned by the Council.
Assumptions were agreed in the context of the Council’s confidence in improvement initiatives currently underway and the likely impact in 2023-24, as follows:
- Staffing – recruitment and retention initiatives are in place, such as from the international recruitment of social workers and the social work academy, to reduce the reliance upon agency workers, with monthly staffing profiles provided by the Council and reflected in the budget
- Placement and sufficiency – the recruitment of in-house foster carers, improved support to foster carers and the development of capacity in existing internal residential homes are progressed, which will be further strengthened by the Residential Homes Strategy, to be implemented by the Council in 2023-24
- Improvements in social work practice – which are expecting to result in a projected reduction in the number of children still on Care Orders, placed with parents before 31 March 2023, and the reversal in the trajectory of increasing placements in external foster care and external residential placements experienced in 2022-23.
The demand model developed will be tracked in the year and the budget outturn will be monitored against this, in order to learn how to further align our resources to our strategy for children, young people and their families over time.
Inflation assumptions contained in the budget are consistent with the Council’s inflation assumptions for 2023/24. Inflation adjustments will be agreed in line with the finance mechanism in the contract.
During the first operational year the Trust will focus on achieving operational stability and as part of this develop a detailed understanding of the base budget of the Trust.
The Trust’s Operating Budget for 2023-24 is summarised as follows:
| Operating costs | £m |
|---|---|
| Direct Staffing (Delivery Teams and Agency) | 74.4 |
| Other Indirect Employee Costs | 0.6 |
| Placement and Support Costs | 101.2 |
| Premises | 3.1 |
| Transport | 2.5 |
| Supplies and Services | 12.4 |
| Trust Costs (Including Improvement) | 4.7 |
| SLAs (to be agreed) | 6.0 |
| Corporate and Youth TUPE | 2.6 |
| Total Cost of Service | 207.5 |
| Funded by | £m |
|---|---|
| DfE Grant | 10.8 |
| Other Grants | 9.8 |
| SLAs (to be agreed) | 6.0 |
| Corporate and Youth TUPE | 2.6 |
| Income Raised by the Trust | 2.0 |
| Additional Income (at risk) | 6.0 |
| Contract Price | 170.3 |
| Total Funding | 207.5 |
| Surplus/(Deficit) | 0.0 |
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Risk management
Risks are events or action which could adversely affect or delay the Trust’s ability to achieve our objectives. By managing these risks both strategically and operationally the Trust increases the likelihood that we will be successful in achieving our objectives and therefore the outcomes for children, young people and families.
The Trust’s risk management and business continuity framework, alongside performance monitoring and quality assurance mechanisms, also support the Trust’s commitment to provide rigorous quality services, improving outcomes for our children and young people in Bradford District.
The management of risk is key to our day-to-day business activities. All of our colleagues have a role in reducing risk.
Operational risks concern day-to-day activities which need to be managed by individual service managers in order for services to be delivered. They are assessed at an operational level and escalated to the senior leadership if appropriate.
Strategic risks are the responsibility of the Executive Leadership Team and concern the overall direction of the Trust and its sustainability. The Strategic Risk Register will be developed in the year and will be reported to and overseen by the Board’s Audit and Risk Committee.
The Trust’s approach to risk management is illustrated in the
graphic below:
Risk register
Most risks are capable of being managed or mitigated, either by managing the likelihood or impact of the risk, or both.
The risk register will capture the actions and improvements that are required to be taken to improve the control environment supporting the risk.
These actions should not be seen as a separate initiative: they should be incorporated into the business planning process.
The Trust will also feed into the Council’s Corporate Risk Management Group, which implements corporate risk management and business continuity arrangements for critical services across all aspects of the Council’s activities.
The risks that the Executive Leadership Team has identified for mitigation, in this initial business plan are:
- Unstable workforce and ongoing difficulties in recruitment and retention
- Potential uncertain/insufficient long-term funding to achieve required outcomes
- Gaps in corporate support for frontline staff
- Slow pace of delivery against the revised Children’s Services Improvement Plan
- Potential for a serious incident for a child in the Trust’s care or in receipt of Trust services or received services prior to the establishment of the Trust
- Inconsistent practice leading to drift and delay for children’s plans.
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Appendices
Trust structure
The Trust is a community interest company, wholly-owned by Bradford Council, with an independent Board setting strategy and an Executive Leadership Team responsible for leading the workforce to deliver services for children, young people and families and secure the improvements identified in the Children’s Services Improvement Plan.
Trust Board
The Trust has an independent Chair and Board, comprising expert and experienced specialists in children’s services and leadership, including two representatives from Bradford Metropolitan District Council. The Board is responsible for setting and reviewing the strategy and objectives of the Trust and providing guidance, support and challenge to the Trust’s executive leadership. The Board will be the Trust’s champions for children and young people, but also champions for Bradford District, using their strong national connections to tap into expertise and maximise opportunities to benefit Bradford District’s children and families.
The Board is pledged to ensure that children, young people and families have a voice and influence in the care and support they receive from the Trust – with family-led decision making at the heart of our practice model. The Board will use its experience to ask critical questions of our services and be honest and open about the challenges the Trust faces and how we are tackling them.
The Board also understands that the Trust’s success in resolving the challenges and improving services depends on all of our committed colleagues, and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with them in this endeavour. We will practice high challenge, but also high support.
See Appendix 2 for the Trust’s Board membership.
Executive Leadership Team
The Executive Leadership Team is responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the Trust’s strategy, service performance and outcomes, and for leading and managing the Trust’s 1,500 colleagues.
See Appendix 2 for the Trust’s s Executive Leadership Team membership.
Functional teams
The initial structure of directorates and functions in the Trust largely reflects the transferring structure from the Council, although there are some new senior leaders to whom directorates and functions will report. The Chief Executive will keep this under review – especially in Social Care and Practice – in close partnership with the new Executive Director.
The overwhelming majority of colleagues and managers are directly involved in the provision of children’s services in the Social Care and Practice directorate, and they are underpinned and supported by colleagues in four Corporate Services directorates.
Social Care and Practice has three service areas:
- Early Help and Local Delivery
- Safeguarding Review and Commissioning
- Children in Care
The full list of services transferred from Bradford Council is in Appendix 3.
Corporate Services has four functional areas:
- Finance and Resources
- Human Resources
- Chief of Staff (job title under review)
- Company Secretary
In addition, a Transformation function supports improvements and efficiencies in both Social Care and Practice and Corporate Services.
Board and Executive Leadership Team
See our leadership page for the trust’s Board and the Executive Leadership Team membership.
Services transferred from Bradford Council
The Trust is contracted by the Council to provide the following services:
Children’s Social Care
- Integrated Front Door (Children in Need)
- Duty and Assessment Teams
- Emergency Duty Team
- Targeted youth support
- Exploitation
- Children Missing
- Early Help Transitions Team
- Court Work Consultants
- Complex Health and Disabilities Team (Children with Disabilities)
- Child in Care and Leaving Care Teams
- Fostering Management – Placement Support, Long Term Care, Recruitment and Marketing, Permanency
- Adoption – Agency Decision Maker duties
- Provider Services – Children’s Homes, Respite, Placement Coordination
- Safeguarding and Reviewing Unit, Local Authority Designated Officer, Child Protection and Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC), Learning and Development
Early Help and Prevention
- Parenting and Family Support
- Prevention, Family Keyworker function, Families First, District Wide Parenting Practice
- Family Hubs, Intensive Family Support, Family Time Service
Youth Justice Service
- Prevention
- Youth Rehabilitation Offer
- Court
- Custody
Purpose, vision and priorities flowchart
The diagram below summarises the flow from our purpose through to our objectives and actions, with our values and commitments underpinning everything.
| Vision | This is what we want and will focus on achieving for Bradford District’s children and young people |
| Purpose | This is what the Trust exists to achieve |
| Outcomes | These are the outcomes we aim to achieve and how we measure our success |
| Priorities | These are the specific, measurable actions we are focused on to achieve these outcomes |
| Actions for improvement | These are the activities we undertake to drive improvements |
| Values and commitments | This is our underpinning culture: how we behave, relate to others and work to deliver our vision |
Agreed demand model 2023-24
| Type of placements | Actuals | Forecast | 2023-24 CLA average – base budget assumption | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31.03.23 | 30.06.23 | 30.09.23 | 31.12.23 | 31.03.24 | 30.06.24 | 30.09.24 | 31.12.24 | 31.03.25 | ||
| Placed with parents | 166 | 160 | 169 | 179 | 99 | 99 | 99 | 99 | 99 | 99 |
| Placed for adoption | 52 | 49 | 42 | 43 | 43 | 45 | 45 | 44 | 44 | 45 |
| Friends and families | 394 | 414 | 419 | 420 | 444 | 453 | 449 | 444 | 440 | 446 |
| Foster parents (internal) | 373 | 375 | 369 | 365 | 391 | 394 | 396 | 400 | 396 | 393 |
| Fostering agencies (external) | 191 | 209 | 231 | 252 | 245 | 247 | 241 | 236 | 230 | 243 |
| Residential care (internal) | 37 | 32 | 32 | 29 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 44 | 53 | 36 |
| Residential care (external) | 105 | 121 | 136 | 152 | 174 | 147 | 141 | 134 | 128 | 139 |
| Supported accommodation | 113 | 111 | 116 | 125 | 123 | 124 | 122 | 120 | 118 | 122 |
| Other | 12 | 15 | 11 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 11 |
| Total Looked After Children | 1,443 | 1,486 | 1,525 | 1,577 | 1,577 | 1,596 | 1,584 | 1,571 | 1,545 | 1,534 |
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