£6.4 million children’s home and ‘staying-close’ flats plan to be approved

Council leaders are set to approve plans for £6.4 million children’s home and staying-close flats in Gloucester.

Gloucestershire County Council’s (GCC) cabinet will be asked to approve plans to provide a new residential children’s home and ‘staying close’ flats to support children in and leaving care.

If plans are approved, the county council is set to open a five bedroomed children’s home for children aged 12 to 17 and provide three flats for care leavers aged 16 to 21 to move on to, by converting its former office at 48 London Road in Gloucester.

To make sure the building is fit for purpose, the council proposes to invest £182,000 from GCC capital funding, along with £891k of DfE capital funding to meet the £1.1 million for the refurbishment and building work at London Road.

The council also estimates a further investment of £5.3 million will be made over five years to care for and support the young people whose home it will be. This includes care and support staff on site 24 hours a day and specialist trauma informed therapeutic support.

Children’s safeguarding and early years cabinet member Stephen Davies (C, Hardwicke and Severn) said: “I am delighted that London Road will be one of the first of a suite of new children’s homes and supported accommodation options that will enable children and young people who need our care to grow up and thrive as part of our community.

“We spend too much on high cost, out of county placements and having more registered accommodation available locally will help us to make funding go further.”

Council leaders hope this will provide more high quality, local homes for children and young people in care is at the heart of the council’s sufficiency strategy ‘Home@theHeart 2022-2026’ which aims to make sure that more children in care can remain in their communities, and attend the same schools, close to family and friends.

And it will increase the availability of high-quality accommodation in the county which complies with regulatory requirements, will reduce the number of high cost out of county placements, provide better value for money, and help more vulnerable children and young people to receive the support they need. It is anticipated that this will save the council around £1 million.

Staying close arrangements are part of a wider package of support which will help young people leaving care by giving them a stable home and relationships as they head into adulthood and find their independence, Shire Hall leaders believe.

If approved, the council will liaise with residents and work to ensure these young people become part of the wider community. Residents will be invited to find out more about the plans at drop-in information sessions and via a dedicated web page.

Labour group leader John Bloxsom (L, Rodborough) said his group welcomes the opportunity to bring home some of the 242 local children in care who live outside of the county, back to Gloucestershire.

“More needs to be done, beyond this one scheme, to create sufficient local provision. We urge the council to build in-house capacity or develop joint ventures, so that it isn’t dependent on profit driven private companies making money from children’s services.

“It is essential that this home is run by a dedicated team experienced in running children’s homes and supporting young people who have experienced trauma.”

Green group deputy leader Rebekah Hoyland (G, Blakeney and Bream) said vulnerable families would be offered more support to look after their children in an ideal world. But she said if that is not possible, which sadly will always be the case, then foster families offer a safe, consistent and loving environment for children.

“We are in a situation where there are so many children in care that we have not got enough foster carers and the decision by cabinet to ‘interfere in this market’ by building their own children’s homes is interesting in the light that they unfortunately decided the best way to deal with the care home market was to withdraw from it.

“So although it is a sad necessity that for some children a GCC children’s home is the best solution for them, I do think that it is better that the council is involved in the care market, as private companies apparently pay shareholders more in dividends than Tesco shareholders several fold.”

The Liberal Democrat group was also approached for comment but declined.

By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter

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