Decisions

See attached Officer Decision Record

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

a. Sandall Beat JFC
Reference No: 01/DCF/21-22/WH&Int
Supported by: Councillor Kidd, Councillor Barwell and
Councillor Muddiman-Rawlins
Cost £500.00 (£166.66 x 3 Councillors)

b. Team Mac Boxing
Reference No: 01/DCF/21-22/Sta&BD
Supported by: Councillor Sue Farmer
Cost £500.00

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.

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.

Currently at the bid evaluation stage with 4 tenders received and being considered

The LA is required to offer impartial mediation services as set out in paragraph 11.15 of the SEN Code of Practice 2014. Form the enactment of the 2014 Children and Families Act Doncaster has contracted with a company called
Essential Mediation. This contract was extended to until July 2021 to enable us to undertake a market testing exercise to determine both the costs and quality of the currently contracted provider. Following that process a formal tender
was put out to the market and 4 companies have bid in for this. The contract value is set at £25k and in the financial year 20/21 the LA projected costs for mediation at £30k with a spend of £20,450.
The bids so far indicate that we are able to find a provider who can offer lower costs and a more flexible offering than that current provided This is to ensure that senior managers are aware of the process being undertaken.

Leger Education Trust (LET) were awarded the Sub-Contract by Big Issue Invest (the Contractor) for delivery of the Key Stage 4 Alternative Provision programme. Despite support from Big Picture Invest (BPI) and the Local Authority, LET were not able to secure the required Professional Indemnity insurance cover. We understand that this was due to Insurance providers being more risk averse as a result of Covid-19 and a lack of appetite to provide cover for Alternative Provision sites who are not regulated by Ofsted (as they do not meet the criteria for registered schools). Insurance providers who were approached to offer quotes were not willing to include Professional Indemnity cover for more than two million pounds.

- The Professional Indemnity insurance requirement for the Contractor (Big Picture Invest) within the contract is two million pounds so the decision has been taken to
vary the contract so that Professional Indemnity levels are the same for both the Contractor and any Sub-Contractors.
- Professional Indemnity insurance is required to cover the Local Authority for any financial loss from the Sub-Contractor or Contractor’s failure in providing professional advice. We have taken advice from the Local Authority’s Insurance department who believe that the risk of this would be small and on that basis would advise that adopting the same level of cover as the Contractor (£2,000,000) is appropriate.

To amend the required level of Professional Indemnity cover within the contract for Sub-Contractor’s from 5 million pounds (£5,000,000) to two million pounds (£2,000,000)

The contract currently requires Sub-Contractor’s to procure and maintain professional indemnity insurance to provide an indemnity of not less than 5 million pounds in respect of any one claim or series of claims arising out one incident. The decision has been taken to reduce this to 2 million pounds in respect of any one claim or series of claims and issue a contract variation amending Schedule 7 to reflect this change.

The object is un-accessioned, in poor condition (consultation with a specialist at Beamish has brought to light that the carriage has in the past – prior to Heritage Doncaster acquiring it – been poorly restored. The Rear Carriage wheels not belonging to this model of carriage) and does not have a strong Doncaster Borough Provenance or connection.

The recommendation to dispose relates particularly to section 5.3.1 of the Collections Development Policy (2019-2023)
which refers to the criteria for disposal from the Social History Collections. As the object is un-accessioned and has never been formally accepted into the collection, the collecting criteria for Social History, outlined in Section 4.1 and in particular 4.1.2 which refers to considerations over care and storage of items. The Omnibus is a large object and would be both difficult to store and very space consuming.

This, when considered against its poor condition (poor historic restoration) and lack of a strong connection to the Borough of Doncaster (as defined at this time by the Borough’s Local Government boundaries) make it a strong candidate for disposal.

That approval is given by the Governing Body of Heritage Doncaster for the decision to dispose of an un-accessioned item known as The Womersley to Pontefract Omnibus, currently held in the Heritage Doncaster Collections, in line with the Heritage Doncaster Collections Development Policy (2019-2023 approved by the Governing body by ODR on 08/04/2019) sections 16.6, the Museum Association Code of Ethics and the Museum Association’s Disposal Toolkit.

Adults Health and Wellbeing Communities Head of Service (HoS), Bill Hotchkiss, started a full consultation to separate the services in October 2019. The consultation was in relation to the split of the Assistive Technology call handers from the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) team to realign them with the HEART which sits within Adult Social Care (ASC).
A key focus area of the consultation has been on the separation of frontline call handling staff. Staff did raise concerns over the management resource requirements to support both teams, however due to the pandemic and other time specific pieces of work (fees and charges) there has been a delay in identifying what the management requirements are to enable the team to safely separate.
In liaison with Human Resources (HR), Assistant Director’s and HoS from ASC and Communities and current team managers of HEART and ARC, we have identified that to enable the HEART call handlers to be aligned in a team with the HEART responders, this requires a grade 10 post to manage and lead this new team.

See attached Officer Decision Record for further information.

To create a grade 10 Team manager role to support the new structure, whereby the Assistive Technology call handlers and the Home Emergency Alarm Response Team (HEART) responder team will form one team.

This allows the split in functions of ARC (CCTV) operatives and Assistive technology calls to be managed separately as per the consultation.

The BCF is a programme spanning both the NHS and local government to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, placing them at the centre of their care and support, and providing then with ‘wrap around’ fully integrated health and social care, resulting in an improved experience and better quality of life.

The Place Plan is one of the major transformational change programmes that makes up the Doncaster Growing Together portfolio. The recent refresh of the Place Plan areas of opportunity has identified Intermediate Care as an ongoing priority area.

It remains critical that projects are delivered individually but more importantly avoid unnecessary duplication and missed opportunities for learning. Strategic Change Management capacity is required to support and challenge the transformation across all areas, ensuring pace and consistency.
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To agree to use the Non-recurrent Better Care Fund Earmarked Reserve allocated to the Place Plan, to allow the extension of a fixed term contract, originally approved in July 2020 and hosted by RDaSH for the full time equivalent Strategic Change Manager post that supports the
Intermediate Care Portfolio.

Investment requested:
• £69,368 of BCF finance over a 12-month period, commencing from 19 July 2021- hosted by RDaSH.

The decision taken is in accordance with recommendations made in a Cabinet Report dated 27th March 2018. The Report approved the spending plan for the non-recurrent BCF Ear-Marked Reserve and the delegated detailed spending decisions for the implementation of the Doncaster
Place Plan £3m, other Integrated Functions £0.7m and unallocated balance £0.7m, to the Director of People, in consultation with the Chief Finance Officer and relevant Portfolio Holder.