Children’s trust in dispute with health board about unpaid invoices
Children’s trust in dispute with health board about unpaid invoices
Children’s trust in dispute with health board about unpaid invoices
By Sarah Ward
The children’s trust is overspending its budget by about £26m this year, but the integrated care board is withholding payment of more than £1.5m.
The county’s independent children’s trust which looks after children in the care system is in dispute with the integrated care board about unpaid invoices.
An update report to go before North Northamptonshire Council’s corporate scrutiny committee next week, reveals that the trust, which has incurred a huge overspend this current financial year, has been in dispute with the ICB for payment of debts totalling £1.499m.
The report states in 2021/22 (the trust’s first year) the ICB was invoiced £1.025m but only agreed to pay £268,000, with £757,000 in dispute. In the following financial year, the ICB only paid £1.8m of the £2.591m invoiced with £742,000 in dispute.
Little detail of why the amounts have gone unpaid are revealed in the report, however as late as last month the trust was in talks with the ICB about them.
NN Journal asked both parties what the issue has been and received the following joint response:
“Northamptonshire Children’s Trust and Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board are working together and with other system partners as part of our regular monitoring and partnership working to ensure all finances are in line with agreed processes for joint funding packages for children. We anticipate partners will resolve this matter soon.”
The report details where the £26m overspend on its original £153m budget for this year has gone.
£24m has been put down to residential costs for children in care, with supported accommodation (which is provided to over 16s) the area that has overspent the most. The budget for this financial year set aside for placing children in supported accommodation was £3.5m but is predicted to come in at just over £15.5m.
Independent placements with private companies have also gone over budget by £9m, costing £41m.
The trust is run by Colin Foster and was set up in 2021 on government orders after ministers ordered the care of children be taken out of the hands of the then failing Northants county council. However since it was established it has made improvements and moved out of being inadequate but is still rated as requiring improvement.
A problem faced by the county council, staff shortages, is still being faced by the trust. The report shows that it employs 1,323 social work staff, with 429 vacancies. 127 of the vacancies are filled by agency staff.
In total the trust was looking after 1200 children at the end of January. It pays for external packages for 682 children. 135 are in private placements, 92 in supported accommodation and 346 in foster care. The cost of private placements is £6,012 per week and supported accommodation costs £3,347 per week.
The overspend of the children’s trust will be covered by both of the unitary councils and has been causing much consternation as both are currently over budget, and due to report their final end of year accounts soon. Earlier this month the cabinet member for highways at the West Northants unitary Phil Larratt was heavily criticised after saying the overspend meant less could be spent on filling the potholes.
Both of the unitaries must by law have a director of children’s services. The North’s director of adult services David Watts has been acting as joint children’s services director and Rebecca Wilshire, who has been the acting director of children’s services in the West, announced recently she is leaving.
The North had a damning SEN report last week and its children’s services were criticised for not providing statutory assessments and support on time, pushing families into crisis. The West has been through a similar review and the results will be published soon.
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On the specific subject matter of this, yet again, excellent article, I would say (from my own experience of three decades in the Civil Service) that public bodies do not turn down invoices from other public bodies at all lightly. There will be a very good (and fully documented) set of reasons for having done so, most likely that payment of these invoices would not pass external audit. It reflects very poorly on both bodies that no further information on this matter has been placed in the public domain. The evasive response provided to Sarah, and recounted here, is inadequate and, as well, deeply disrespectful, ultimately to the public who, as taxpayers local and national, ultimately have to pay the bill. It would, incidentally, be interesting to know what the situation is on similar invoices and payments in the current year.
More broadly, the public impression of the situation with the Children's Trust is appalling. Again, this is, in significant part, due to the concealment of information by the Trust and by the two councils. But the fact is that the Trust IS spending an anomalously large amount of money. It IS looking after a surprisingly large number of children. It IS conducting its operations inefficiently. It IS doing very badly in most assessments of the quality of the services that it provides. And the processes of scrutiny of the Trust, including the quality of the people representing the public through the councils in doing this, ARE deeply inadequate. Overall, therefore, the public of Northamptonshire ARE receiving extremely poor value through the current arrangements.
Cllr Larratt (whom I do not know and for whom I hold no candle) was quite correct to say, effectively, that the other vital functions of the councils are being undermined by the enormous sums being paid to the Trust. To suggest that he was "blaming the children" was deeply and knowingly disingenuous, to the point where one questions the motivations of the individual who made that remark. The whole issue of the sums expended by local taxpayers on the Trust, and the quality of service provided, needs as much public airing as possible. To try to shut down the subject in order to make a cheap political point was and is deeply reprehensible.
There is, to my mind, no solution to the problems of, and caused by, the Trust (that I listed above) that can or will be found through the mechanisms currently in place. Yet, if nothing is done, both the councils and the services to children themselves will collapse. The only way ahead is through external intervention by the relevant Government department, which is the DLUHC. Our local MPs, and, as well, the candidates who wish to take their places, should be calling for this, yet they are not. Why?
My own experience of having to deal with the system providing supported accomodation for those on Section3 is that some of these "hostels " and flats are set up by unscrupulous people who are there to milk the system by not providing proper, and in some cases any, support for the individuals under their "care". There are islands of good practise but the odds of finding available ones is very low.
Those monitoring that system are always changing jobs and it is too easy to put one over on them - hence the vast somes being expended to no good outcome.