Children's Residential Care - Hampshire

In Hampshire, like the national picture, we are seeing a growing need for children's residential placements. Specifically, we have an increasing need for residential care for those children between the ages of 12 (and most commonly 14) - 17, up to the age of 18.

We have seen an increase in children who have higher needs due to trauma, dysregulated or challenging behaviour and poor mental health. For this cohort of children it takes much longer to find a suitable residential setting, which can mean these children spend time in temporary placements and/or arrangement that do not meet their needs.

Over the last year the Council have been progressively more required to commission CQC placement due to the lack of available Ofsted setting that are able to meet the child's needs.

Our aim is always to identify suitable placements, close to the child's family home, where appropriate, enabling the child to maintain their social and support networks, including access to health and education. In Hampshire circa. 60% of the approximate 190 children we care for in Residential settings are placed outside of Council's geographical area.

What we are looking to do

To address our sufficiency duty strategy we are looking to commission four new children's homes specifically for Hampshire children with complex or challenging needs.

We anticipate undertaking a tender exercise to commission:

• 2 x solo homes for children with the highest / most complex needs (either one or two providers)

• 1 x solo home linked to a multi bed setting for children who due to their needs, initially, cannot live alongside other children, and therefore require interventions or a period of stability before transitioning.

• 1 x multi bed setting with a focus on supporting children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties which may also include challenging behaviours, poor mental health and/or neurodiverse conditions.

We would be looking at a rapid mobilisation period to increase sufficiency and enable placements as soon as possible.

Hampshire County Council are seeking the views of the market on the development of the services outlined in the service description. To do this the Council has developed a questionnaire and is hosting a supplier event.

The market engagement event will be at 1:30pm on Wednesday 14th August via MS Teams. Suppliers who wish to attend should register with intend, express an interest in the project CS24772 and message the Council with the name of the attendee, their email address and the organisation they will be representing. Meeting invitations will be sent out on the 13th August

The Council is also seeking feedback on specific areas of the service and would welcome responses from suppliers. Suppliers can access the questionnaire via intend and need to return it by Friday the 23rd August.