Agenda item

Consideration was given to a report of the Assistant Director of Safeguarding and Partnerships which informed the Cabinet that the current contract for the delivery of Oldham’s integrated early years offer – Right Start Service – was due to end on 31st March 2019.  This contract had an option to extend for a period of up to two years. The Cabinet noted that the majority of the functions in this service were statutory in nature, applicable to both Public Health and Education. 

Cabinet was informed that, on 1^st April 2016, the new integrated delivery model for Oldham Early Years Offer – Right Start and School Nursing Service - was brought together from a number of providers into a single service delivered by Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust.  The aim of the service was to tackle a number of key early childhood outcomes through the delivery of a number of functions:-

·       Health Visiting (HCP)

·       Children’s Centres

·       Family Nurse Partnership (FNP)

·       Oral Health; and

·       deliver Oldham’s version of the GM 8 stage assessment and intervention model

In addition the School nursing service was also commissioned to Bridgewater and aligned to the Right Start service to create an integrated 0-19 universal child health service.

Overall performance against the contract had been as expected. The rise in safeguarding demands across the whole system locally had an impact on Health Visiting and School Nursing services and, in responding to this, Bridgewater had seen a negative impact on their ability to deliver the universal element of their roles. This was kept under continual review by Council commissioners.

The Cabinet noted that the SEND inspection of Oldham in October 2017, had highlighted the integrated early years model as a key strength.

The Cabinet was informed that there was encouraging performance in respect of the key ambition around the ‘school readiness’ agenda, with a higher % of mandated reviews at 2 – 2.5 years being undertaken than regional and national averages. The results of these reviews showed that the percentage of children who were at or above the expected level in all five areas of development was higher than the regional average but it remained a key area of focus as children were tracked through the new model.

The Cabinet noted there was ongoing development and improvement activity overseen by Council commissioners linked to other developments around place-based working and the review of Oldham’s preventative offer.

Bridgewater were part of the Alliance under the Oldham Cares arrangements and as such may play a key future role as integrated models for children and young people were developed across the system.

Cabinet noted that Bridgewater NHS Trust had recently been subject to a sustainability review by NHS Improvement as a result of changes across the health and social care system in Wigan which would see a large number of services being transferred from Bridgewater into the new provider arrangement. Such a review was the norm in such circumstances and the outcome was expected in December. The outcome of the review would inform the consideration of the recommended option to extend as would the outcome of the recent CQC inspection.

It was explained that the Council had the ability to extend the contract for up to two years but a one year extension was felt to be appropriate, given that the outcome of the sustainability review was not known and there was a need for the Council to retain flexibility in its ability to commission alternative arrangements from 2020 on the back of new delivery models currently being scoped.

Options/Alternatives considered:

Option 1 – Extend the current arrangements for a period of one year for the period 1st April 2019 – 31st March 2020.

Option 2 – Extend the current arrangement for a period of two years for the period 1st April 2019 – 31st March 2021.

RESOLVED - That the Cabinet would consider the commercially sensitive information contained at Item 12 of the agenda.