Decisions

see attached officer decision record

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

a. St Joseph’s and Teresa Church Hall
Reference No: 16/DCF/21-22/Adw&Car
Supported by: Councillor Hutchinson
Cost £1000.00

see attached officer decision record

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

a. Barnby Dun Cricket Club
Reference No: 11/DCF/21-22/St&BD
Supported by: Councillor Farmer
Cost £300.00

b. Friends of Tickhill Mill Dam (FOTMD)
Reference No: 12/DCF/21-22/Ti&Wad
Supported by: Councillor Cannings & Councillor Greenhalgh
Cost £300.00 (£150.00 x 2 Councillors)

c. Balby West TARA
Reference No: 13/DCF/21-22/Hex&BN
Supported by: Councillor Jones
Cost £450.00

See attached Officer Decision Record for full details

To provide funding of £85,000 through a variation to the section 76 contract to Doncaster Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Doncaster CAMHS). This is to provide a programme of training and support to schools to assist them over the long term to better meet the complex needs of their students in respect of supporting their
low-level mental health issues.

The Council have received notification from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner that Doncaster will receive £106k of funding from the second round of the Home Office Safer Streets fund.

Doncaster was part of an initial tri-partite bid with Rotherham and Barnsley Councils and South Yorkshire Police. The bid sought to fund a number of initiatives in the Dearne Valley area to tackle acquisitive crime, enhance investigations and improve public confidence. The bid for Doncaster focused upon the Mexborough area, as we were aware of particular issues following a recent murder in January this year.

The bid for Mexborough was based around the following outcomes:

• Improved public sense of safety, pertinent to recent events.
• Improved confidence in the partner agencies
• Disruption to Organised Crime Group (OCG) activity
• Deter and detect a wide range of other crimes (environmental, crimes against the person etc.)

The awarded funding totals £106k and is broken down into three main elements. The first is £32k awarded for the target hardening of properties, using smartwater and other crime reduction tools.

The second is £64k provided for the purchase of additional CCTV, which will be positioned in key areas with higher levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, or where the public feel vulnerable. Work has already started in identifying these areas.

The final element is £10k to be used for the development of neighbourhood networks. These networks will be very important, as they will involve the local community developing active groups to follow similar principals to neighbourhood watch. The funding will kick-start these local groups and fund the purchase of signage and marketing materials.

In terms of administering the funding, we have an established locality Partnership structure in the Mexborough area (Mexborough Locality Bronze Plus) which would be able to monitor the project going forward, recognising the funding would have to be spent by March 2022.

To approve the receipt of grant funding from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC), which relates to the successful award of Safer Streets Funding from the Home Office.

REASON FOR DECISION
1. To employ a habilitation officer using the Wellbeing for Education Return Grant: We have an increase in the number of Young People with higher levels of visual impairment who require support in order to be independent in their physical educational environment, their journey’s to school and their local communities. Many of these young people have experienced significant breaks in support and continuity in relation to this due to covid and have struggled to transition into new learning environments, work or training. This has had a resulting impact upon the wellbeing of this already vulnerable group, many of whom have had to transition into new physical environments with limited support for mobility and orientation. They have also missed out on key independent living skills that centre around organisation skills and access to equipment needed in lessons such as technology and PE Previous services in this field were historically funded and employed within adult services but these have since been withdrawn. The role covers these core functions:
• Assess and teach mobility and independent living skills to children and young people with vision impairment including Sighted guide skills, Trailling skills, Cane skills and Independent travel;
• To upskill and support parents and education professionals on how to support the mobility and independence of children and young people with vision impairment;
• To complete environmental audits of a range of settings and providing advice on how to ensure it is fit for purpose and safe for a child or young person with a vision impairment;
• To contribute to the development of the VI Service and maximise outcomes for the children and young people on caseload.

To use Wellbeing for Education Return funding in order to
support visually impaired children and young people through the employment of a Habilitation Officer

This service has not been fully staffed since it’s inception in 2017. There have been difficulties in recruiting suitable candidates – due partly to the previous temporary
nature of the posts.
Since march 2020 the service has been stood down with the 2 current employees being redeployed to work on home to school transport covering bus escorts. The service is now restarting with effect from September 2021 and there is a need to recruit to the previous vacancies and place the service onto a longer term and more sustainable footing

To make the 2 current temporary posts permanent - the current post holders will need to be placed on redeployment and the posts advertised so that any redeployees can apply in the first instance.
All 5 posts are 20 hours per week, term time only and operate on a split shift basis am and pm.

Also to create a further 3 permanent posts – the original project to create an Independent Travel Training service specified one overall co-ordinator together with a total of 5 travel trainers carrying out the day to day operation of the service. These posts were originally created in 2017 however due to them being vacant for a long
period and changes to their line managers the original posts no longer exist.

The project aims to provide a programme of intensive wrap-around school-to-school support that addresses the specific issues of each targeted school. The programme aims to ensure that the target schools play an integral part in the process and aims to employ a “done with” model of
support to effect buy-in from the school. It aims to build on the lessons learned from other Opportunity Areas where school-to-school support has been put in place to support the
improvement of schools with the most entrenched issues and those that are in need of additional leadership capacity/ system leadership in specific identified areas.

To grant award a total of £125,000 to the supporting schools to provide school-to-school support to a total of 8 schools. This also includes an allocation of £5,000 to Doncaster Research School who will be providing additional CPD/ network opportunities to system leaders, with a particular
focus on the implementation process and up to date research guidance.

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.

See attached ODR for full details

To increase the level of resource supporting the re- engagement of children and young people who are missing education or whose parents have opted to electively home educate them.

Further details on the posts can be found within the attached ODR.

Funding for these posts would come from the Opportunity Area Programme.

The Doncaster Opportunity Area Funding is time limited and has to be spent by the 31st August 2021.

See attached ODR for full details

To provide £40,000 funding to Expect Youth to support the costs of providing a dedicated post for 1-year to support schools to maximise the extensive range of extra-curricular opportunities currently available across Doncaster.

See attached ODR for full details

To document the implementation of recommendation 3 of the Cabinet decision dated 10th April 2018 by developing an Alternative Provision Framework and Dynamic Purchasing System.

Recommendation 3 delegated strategic decision making regarding the deployment of resources., consideration of potential changes to the Alternative Provision estate and challenge to the wider system to the Director of People and the Chief Finance Officer, in consultation with the Cabinet member for Children and Young People

See attached ODR for full details

To proceed with the appointment process for 2 Ambition Coaches at Grade 8 to deliver The Pathways to Progression Programme. The cost of each role will be £27,049 - £30,564 per annum

See attached ODR for full details

To direct award to 4 Childcare Providers that offer specialist enhanced provision to children with emerging special needs, disabilities and medical needs (Enhanced
Providers). Each Enhanced Provider will be awarded annual funding of £11,700.
Danum Daises - North
Doncaster Deaf Trust – East
Little Einstein’s Central
Little Einstein’s Denaby – South

This contract will enable settings to meet the Council’s Service requirements and provide the ability to resource settings above their existing ratios. This will enable
Doncaster Council to meet the identified and assessed needs of children with complex SEN who are in receipt of EIA funding in an early years provision (Private,Voluntary and Independent providers, Local Authority maintained and academy nursery and Reception classes.

These providers will support access for families and address the correlation between SEND poor educational outcomes and socio-economic deprivation. Each provision serves one of the four areas of Doncaster (East, North, South and Central), each located within or near an area of socio-economic deprivation.

The decision has been taken based on advice from the Technical Governance Board and the Procurement Service. This contract has previously direct awarded but the aggregated contract value will be in excess of the £25K direct award threshold, so a tender process is now required.
The contract was a CPR waiver last year due to our inability to go out to tender as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A longer-term contract will not only allow the Buy Doncaster central team to forward plan more effectively but will give internal providers and Buy Doncaster customers a more consistent service delivery. It can also allow for the Council to obtain a far more competitive price, in return for a longer term commitment.

The decision is to work closely with the Procurement and Legal services to procure a 3-year contract (with an option of a 2-year extension) for a digital traded services platform for Buy Doncaster. The current annual price of the digital platform is £22,430 and a maximum budget of approximately £32,000 per annum has been set to allow for the purchase of additional modules and the integration of online card payments throughout the life of the contract. An open tender
exercise will be conducted in order to award this contract but the total value does not exceed £189,330 over the life-span of the contract.

The service specification was written to include functionality to support the effective sales and purchasing of Buy Doncaster Contracts, Services and Training, along with Customer Relationship Management functionality to improve the quality of customer service and a Governors Module for the management of agendas and minutes and the storage of Governor information.

The full system cost will be managed by Learning and Opportunities: Skills and Culture
Directorate.

See attached ODR for full details

Secondary schools collaborative school improvement and grant funding St Wilfred’s Academy to lead on a wellbeing and alternative provision project with Doncaster schools.

To procure an occupational health system for three years (with an option to extend for a further 3 years) to replace the current unintegrated occupational health systems to enable the council and partners to meet their statutory obligations in a more integrated, secure, efficient and effective manner.

To procure a dedicated occupational health system to replace the current unintegrated occupational health systems to enable the council and partners to meet their statutory obligations in a more integrated, secure, efficient and effective manner.

There are currently multiple systems which are outdated, inefficient and not integrated. They do not include all the aspects of work required by occupational health to fulfil its full remit of services and statutory obligations. Using the current systems are time consuming, cause duplication and cannot accommodate the needs of external clients resulting in multiple different operational processes and workflows.

Following a procurement exercise undertaken in accordance with the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules through ProContract Ref: DN547989 the Orchid Live System was the most economically advantageous tender evaluated against those criteria sent out with the ITQ Dialogue.

The procurement of Orchid Live will provide a web based secure on line system for the management and storage of occupational health records. It is a tailored occupational health management system that can accommodate all clients and the full range of occupational health procedures in an integrated and structured manner. This will facilitate the effective and efficient management of occupational health processes and employee related management functions ensuring compliance with complex legislative requirements including the Data Protection Act 2018(as amended), the Access to Health Records Act 1990, the Medical Reports Act 1998 as well as other key employment and health and safety legislation.

The system will support delivery of the following outcomes:-

• Modern online services
• Redesigned and integrated services
• Provide business intelligence to help us become more proactive in providing services, making accurate decisions, delivering services
• Systems that allow the council to operate more efficiently and offer better value for money;
• Improve the reputation of the organisation

A more streamlined service and better health surveillance will contribute to maximising attendance, reductions in sickness and more timely return to work. A healthy and productive workforce has an impact on the health determinants of their families and the wider community.

The tender was for a 3 year period with an option to extend for 3 further 12 month periods. The cost of the system will be an initial set up of £9845 and an annual cost of £15,000pa which will be met through existing HR&OD budgets.

The council’s Occupational Health service has provided access to a physiotherapy service since approximately 2007 following being part of a pilot with 3 other South Yorkshire local authorities where Rehab Works provided the physiotherapy.

It was initially funded through a grant to assess what the impact would be, if early access to physiotherapy was available, on absence/return to work rates where the absence was due to musculo-skeletal reasons. This linked to accessibility to such services via GPs, significant waiting times leading to longer periods of absence while awaiting treatment.

Positive results from the pilot meant Doncaster Council decided to continue providing access to a physiotherapy service, using Rehab Works and then via a previous employee of Rehab Works who set up his own business, CJS Physiotherapy.

Feedback received by users of the service is excellent, well valued by staff and managers and has the desired effect by preventing absence from occurring in some cases and reducing the length of absence in others.

A procurement exercise was done in 2016 to have contractual arrangements in place to ensure the continued provision of this much valued and effective service. An offer was then made giving the opportunity for appropriately qualified organisations/people to tender to be part of a framework. The framework was to operate by the lead organisation being the primary provider and other providers could be called upon in periods of high demand or lack of availability of the lead provider.

Following a successful procurement exercise in 2016, 3 organisations were assessed as meeting the necessary standard and were ranked as follows:

1. CJS Physiotherapy
2. Connect Physical Health Centres Ltd
3. Nuffield Health

All 3 were placed on the framework with CJS Physiotherapy awarded the initial call off contract as the 1st ranked tenderer. The contract was offered for a period of 3 years commencing on 1st October 2016 with an option to extend for a further 12 month period. A contract waiver was done in 2020 to continue the framework for a further 12 months due to the impact of the Covid Pandemic and this expires on 30 September 2021.

The council wants to continue with a hierarchical approach for the new Framework which will commence on 01/10/21 following a successful procurement exercise in which we will invite local providers to be part of and support social value. Therefore, on 30 June 2021 a new Specification was issued via ProContract inviting submissions from 5 suppliers with a closing date for return of quotations by 9th August 2021.

The council received responses from 3 suppliers, all of which were evaluated in line with the specification as meeting the necessary standard and were ranked as follows:
1. CJS Physiotherapy
2. Pure Physiotherapy Ltd
3. Chapman Physiotherapy Ltd

All 3 are therefore confirmed as being placed on the framework with CJS Physiotherapy again being awarded the initial call off contract as the first ranked supplier.* The contract will be for a period of 3 years commencing on 1st October 2021 with an option to extend for a further 12 month period.

While the service is demand led and therefore does not have a definitive value, it is estimated the potential value of the total contract including all available extensions is in the region of £165,000 - £220,000. This is also dependant on the supplier accessed (supplier 1 being the most economical).

* The main physiotherapist supplier is self-employed providing his services to other clients as well but the council has complied with HMRC’s IR35 rules and completed appropriate documentation to support this.

To confirm the successful tenderers following the procurement exercise to create a framework of suitably qualified organisations to provide physiotherapy services to referred council employees and other customers of the council’s Occupational Health service with the aim of retaining staff in the workplace or facilitating an early return to work from sickness absence.

The outcome of the tender will deliver 168 inpatient detoxification placements for the 11 local authority members of the Doncaster led consortium during 21/22

To award inpatient detoxification services contracts to Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health Foundation Trust/ Aspire New Beginnings, and Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust Chapman Barker Unit following the conclusion of an open tender process.

This decision is pursuant to an executive decision taken on the 12th April 2021 for Doncaster Council to receive the section 31 grant funding from Public Health England, commission detoxification placements for 11 local authorities via an open tender process and delegate 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 inpatient detoxification grant.