Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which local authority children's services departments are not run directly by the local authority; and what the structure is within which each such department operates.

Many local councils use a variety of commissioning approaches to have specific parts of their children’s services run by organisations other than themselves. I am sorry, but the department does not have a record of such arrangements.

A small proportion of local councils have arrangements whereby the entirety of their service is run at arms’ length from the council, including some that are in intervention. The department has used different approaches for local councils in intervention, depending on their needs and circumstances. In two local councils (Doncaster and Slough), the department established an independent trust to deliver children’s services after services had consistently been judged as inadequate. Sunderland local council has also established a children’s services trust, Together for Children, after its services were judged as inadequate. In the Isle of Wight, children’s services are currently delivered through a partnership with Hampshire local council, which has been enforced through a Statutory Direction. In Rotherham, the government removed control of all services from the council following publication of reports on historic child sexual exploitation and appointed a team of Commissioners. Some services have been handed back to the council but this does not yet include children’s services.

We are also aware of a number of autonomously established alternative delivery models. The most notable example is Achieving for Children, a social enterprise company that was set up and co-owned by Richmond and Kingston local authorities to run both their children’s services. It has since expanded to include the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. The department now provides funding to Achieving for Children through the Partners in Practice Programme to extend their approach and so that we can understand the impact of this model better. Beyond this, however, the department does not track each local council’s operating model.

In all of these examples, the council maintains statutory responsibility for the children in their care.