One of the more high-profile challenges inherited by the new Government was the prisons crisis. With overflowing cells and poor conditions for many prisoners, a programme of early releases has taken place to try and ease the pressure. But children’s custody and care also faces profound challenges, reflecting what the Prisons Inspectorate have called “a decade of missed opportunities and decline.”
These complex challenges demand innovative solutions. Several years ago, Leapwise worked on a similar project that aimed to do exactly this. We worked with children’s services in the West Midlands to design a new way of providing high-quality secure care and custody for young people.
The Challenge
When we took on the project, there was a shortage of high-quality secure care and custody for children and young people in the West Midlands. With fragmented services and insufficient support available for a cohort of people with complex needs and at serious risk of harm, there were poor outcomes in terms of reoffending, education, and health.
Our goal was to work with West Midlands Children’s Service to identify the full picture of demand and design a solution that could provide better wraparound support. That ultimately involved developing a new operating model for secure care and custody that could win the support of leaders across the region.
Our Approach
Leapwise worked with a Safe Centre Partnership Board – comprising representatives from 12 local authorities, 3 police and crime commissioners, third sector partners and health and educational service advisers – to carry out a collaborative project across 3 main phases:
1. Demand analysis
We began with detailed analysis of the current picture, identifying the pathways that young people took into custody or care and the overall demand facing the region (roughly 200 referrals per year). This was invaluable to inform the business case for a new operating model, but it also enabled partners to develop a more sophisticated view of the complex needs of service users – with our evidence suggesting that children and young people in secure welfare settings had, on average, more than 6 identified types of complex need. Histories of serious abuse, neglect and exclusion were the norm – and care and support provided had often been inadequate to meet these needs.
2. Operating model design and development
We then created a detailed blueprint for a new operating model, framed around a central ‘Safe Centre Hub’ (with 20-26 secure places and 4-8 non-secure places for children and young people), 2 residential care facilities, an expert support service for those who had left these facilities, and an intensive fostering service. This drew on the huge expertise of the partners we worked with (Kibble and Catch22) the detailed analysis of the demand picture we had created, and extensive co-design workshops with frontline practitioners.
3. Producing an investment case
Leapwise then put together a robust investment case requesting funds from central government to support the new operating model. Alongside extensive cost modelling and analysis, this went into exceptional detail to prove feasibility, with a surveyor to identify 5 existing sites that could host the Safe Centre Hub and legal support to identify the joint venture vehicles that could drive delivery. It also explored financing models and other key considerations that could drive success.
Results
Our work enabled a robust operating model to be designed by the end of the project and a compelling bid to be put together. This gained support from the Department for Education sponsor.
Crucially, we built a coalition which united around the bid to central government that would have seen this idea become reality. The full bid for £30m of investment was co-signed by the Chair of the West Midlands Safe Centre Partnership, the West Midlands Mayor, the Police and Crime Commissioner, and all 14 Directors of Children’s Services from the local authorities in the region. Catch22 and Kibble also joined our truly cross-party and cross-sector bid for a new way of operating.
“I have no doubt that the success of our bid to the design phase, which will potentially have a significant impact on the lives of vulnerable young people for many years to come was down to the rigour and quality of the analysis and attention to detail that Leapwise instigated from the beginning.”
Louise Rees, Chair of the West Midlands Safe Centre Partnership
The department did not, however, end up funding the project. It was considered seriously in repeated budget processes but fiscal pressures – including a massive and short-sighted fall in the capital budget – meant that this project was competing for funding with basic maintenance of existing Secure Children’s Homes and schools. Innovation and place-based preventative solutions were felt to be unaffordable, however significant the potential long-term return on investment.
What other public sector organisations can learn from this
In the years since this project, none of the underlying problems have gone away. In many cases – as evident in the Government’s own efforts to tackle the prisons and custody crises – they have only worsened. And the Government’s devolution agenda is a welcome recognition that these kinds of place-based solutions are likely to be more tailored to local needs than top-down national reforms.
While our bid didn’t win central government backing then, we think ideas like this deserve more attention – and hope their time will come soon. We also think they prove something: that local leaders from different geographies and sectors can come together and create something new and exciting.
“The best decision that the West Midlands Safe Centre Partnership made was in employing Leapwise as their consultants.”
Hugh Disley, Programme Manager
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