Decisions

See attached Officer Decision Record

To approve the following application for grant funding from the Members Ward Budget 2021/22

a. St Paul’s Community Church – Family Fun @ 4pm
Reference No: 03/DCF/21-22/WH&Int
Supported by: Councillors Daniel Barwell, Jane Kidd, Emma MuddimanRawlins
Cost £400.00 (£133.33 x 3 Councillors)

b. The Peoples Focused Group
Reference No: 04/DCF/21-22/Int
Supported by: Councillors Daniel Barwell, Jane Kidd, Emma MuddimanRawlins
Cost £617.76 (£205.92 x 3 Councillors)

c. Raghbir Singh
Reference No: 05/DCF/21-22/Bess
Supported by Councillors Gemma Cobby, Jake Kearsley, Majid Khan,
Dave Shaw
Cost £1,000.00 (£250.00 x 4 Councillors)

d. John England
Reference No: 06/DCF/21-22/Th&Moor
Supported by: Councillor Mark Houlbrook
Cost £287.00

e. Conisbrough Community Events
Reference No: 07/DCF/21-22/Con
Supported by Councillor Lani-Mae Ball
Cost £1,000.00

During 2020/21 financial support for local authorities was made available from the Government by way of grants under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003 to deliver key activities to respond to local outbreaks of COVID, provide containment interventions and support residents most impacted by COVID. The first tranche of funding under the heading of Test and Trace (T&T) of £2.23m was approved via a Rule 16 on 13th July 2020. Further funding was released under the heading Contain Outbreak Management Fund (COMF) £2.495m and £5.527m both approved via a Rule 16 on 9th November 2020 and 23rd December 2020 respectively. All three approvals delegated to the Director of Public Health in consultation with the Director of Corporate Resources and the Portfolio Holder for Public Health future decision making regarding these funding streams.

To allocate £1.43m of COVID funding secured in 2020-2021 for key areas of COVID-19 related services.

To provide grants to pump prime the Community Renewal Fund awarding grants to Refurnish Chamber, South Yorkshire Sports Foundation and Voluntary Action Doncaster £20k

To provide a grant to Expect Youth to provide COVID safe summer activity programme £25k

An overarching Doncaster COVID Testing Strategy is in place which aligns to the objectives of Doncaster’s outbreak control plan. It outlines the wide range of testing approaches including symptomatic testing and asymptomatic testing. The opportunities for accessing testing is constantly evolving and therefore necessary that our approach is flexible and reactive to the Government’s developments.
Doncaster Council has been providing asymptomatic community testing since 14th December 2020. Approval was provided to accept funding up to £2.8m via a Rule 16 on the 14th January 2021 and delegated to the Director of Public Health in consultation with the Director of Corporate Resources and the Portfolio Holder for Public Health future decision making regarding the Community Testing funding. In total, still covered in the key decision, the Council has received so far £566k (Jan-Mar 2021) and circa £750k (Apr-Jun 2021) to provide asymptomatic testing.

To remodel and extend the delivery of Community Testing until 31st March 2022 with a more targeted focus on disproportionally impacted groups and underrepresented groups.
To accept receipt of funding to deliver our Community Collect Testing proposals circa £531,888.

See attached ODR for full details

To approve £16,350.50 to be used from the ‘Revenue Contribution to the Capital Programme Reserve’ to make good the shortfall required to fund all 3 Community Investment Masterplans (CIMs) at Thorne-Moorends, Rossington and Edlington.

The Health Visiting Service have piloted the use of a Me and My Baby (MaMB) tool to assess the mother-baby relationship and identify where additional support may be needed. They have found that a proportion of new parents would benefit from additional support below the specialist level of care provided by the existing perinatal mental health service. The Health Visiting service are ideally positioned to identify families where perinatal mental health needs are unmet though the utilisation of specialist public health nursing skills and the 5 mandated health checks they are contracted to carry out for all new parents in Doncaster.

The decision has been taken to invest £80,000 of the recently awarded ‘Prevention and Promotion for Better Mental Health Fund 2021/22’ monies into the existing Health visiting service offer to meet the unmet need of new parents suffering with mild to moderate perinatal mental health issues that do not meet the threshold for existing specialist perinatal mental health services. This will be directed towards dedicated Health Visitor time to deliver support in addition to the current healthy child programme. Designated Health Visitors with training and an interest in perinatal mental health will work one to one with families with mild to moderate perinatal mental health needs using strengths based approaches.

The Council has been successful in a recent bid submission to the MHCLG for £168,000 funding to increase access to new private rented sector tenancies for ex-offenders who are, or are risk of becoming homeless with the aim of reducing rough sleeping and reoffending.

The funding will enable the recruitment of a Private Rented Sector Liaison officer to pro-actively seek accommodation with the private rented sector for this often excluded client group. In addition, two Tenancy Sustainment Officers will be recruited to provide intensive support to enable individuals to stabilise and settle within accommodation. The funding will also allow for a tenancy support financial package to be made available in order to offer personalised interventions for individuals such as rent in advance, furniture packs etc.

Approval to accept £168,000 of funding (£142,500 in 2021/22 and £25,500 in 2022/23) from MHCLG to provide accommodation for ex-offenders who are homeless or at risk of homelessness/rough sleeping.

A significant safeguarding investigation is taking place within the Borough focused on a provider of Children and Adult’s services. There is a joint adult and children’s governance
arrangement in place with a Strategic Management Group overseeing the investigation, making decisions and ensuring that it is adequately resourced. The Investigation Management Group coordinates the overall response and meets on a regular basis with the other Local Authorities who had children placed with the provider and CCG’s to keep
them informed. In order to complete the work within a timely way which will support the wider Police and multi-agency investigations we need additional experienced staff
capacity to support the work. At the moment the resourcing needs of the investigation are as follows:


Care: Lead Senior Manager, Team Manager, 8 social workers, 2 x LADO’s, 2 x SPOCS and a HOS Health: 8 nurses, designated safeguarding nurse (funded by CCG)
Police: 8 police officers and SIO

The expected costs to the Council of the additional staffing capacity and resource up to 31st October 2021 are £807,000 broken down as follows:

Lead Senior Manager £58,340
Team Manager & 8 SW’s £569,380
Head of Service (50% of time) £47,780
Additional Doncaster Children’s Services Trust costs totalling £131,500 for LADO’s,
SPOC’s, Business Support, Subject Matter Expert and Project Consultant.

It is anticipated that the current arrangement will need to continue for at least 6 months, but more likely 12 months +.
Previous ODR 2122001 titled “Social Care Support Grant“ approved the planned spend of £2,975,000 for additional Social Care Support grant, which is delegated to the Director of Learning, Opportunities and Skills and Assistant Director of Finance (Section 151) in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Skills. The planned spend included up to £795,000 to Doncaster Children’s Services Trust (DCST) for additional Social Workers during 2021/22 and £640,000 Social Care costs contingency to be used for service reviews and any in year demand pressures on the Care Ladder. The £640,000 contingency is now to be used for the additional staffing capacity and resource required, and the remaining balance of the expected costs of £167,000 will be funded from the £795,000 for additional Social Workers as this allocation will not be fully spent in 2021/22 due to the timings of when appointments are to be made.

To approve the expected costs of £807,000 up to 31st October 2021 for the additional staffing capacity and resources required are to be funded from the £2,975,000 Social Care Support Grant delegated to the Director of Learning, Opportunities and Skills and Assistant Director of Finance (Section 151) in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Skills.

Please see table in the attached Officer Decision Record detailing requests for uplifts from Providers for out of authority education requested for the year from 1st April 2021.
The uplift request relates to the cost of places prior to the 2021 framework for the Council being put in place. For these placements the contract with the providers states that; ‘The Provider may in assessing their need for an annual, inflationary, fee request consider information derived from a number of sources such as RPI/Teachers Pay award, but at all times must pay due heed to working in partnership with Local Authorities to attain Value for Money and to achieve efficiency improvements’. Both parties will have regard to the actual costs incurred by the Provider. If the Provider proposes to increase the Price and/or Additional Service Fee, then such increases must be demonstrated by the Provider as being justified.

For transparency, the main reasons for the requests of uplifts from the below providers is due to unavoidable cost pressures such as inflation, National Living Wage increases and statutory pension contributions of staffing.

To consider the annual uplift request from providers of Out of Authority Education placement Provision.