This report sets out the Brighter Futures for Children 2022/23 Business Plan and contract sum for approval by the Committee acting as Sole Member.

The Deputy Chief Executive submitted a report to the Committee, in its capacity as sole member of Brighter Futures for Children (BFfC), setting out for approval BFfC’s 2022/23 Business Plan and contract sum, as required by the company’s Articles of Association.  The Business Plan was attached to the report at Appendix 1.

The covering report set out the key points of the Business Plan which was based around the vision of protecting and enhancing the lives of the children of Reading, helping families find long-term solutions to ensure children led happy, healthy and successful lives. Post pandemic, BFfC’s focus was returning to prevention with four underpinning priorities: to work together and across local partnerships to manage the demand for services, maximise the impact and outcomes for children and families and use collective resources wisely; to deliver effective early help services which prevented the need for later, statutory involvement while contributing to increased resilience across the partnership to intervene at the earliest opportunity; to deliver a sustainable Children Social Care service through practice rooted in relational and ‘earliest’ statutory engagement with families; and to use its expertise to influence and support education settings to offer high quality teaching and learning for all within nurturing and accessible environments, including a relentless focus on those who required bespoke or specialised support.

In agreeing the Business Plan the Committee was asked to note that the Council had made provision for a contract sum of £48.251m which was an increase of approximately £815k from the 2021/22 contract sum and included £6.716m for leases and services provided by the Council via Service Level Agreements.  In addition to the contract sum, Policy Committee had agreed at its meeting on 23 September 2021 (Minute 39 refers) to provide a total of £1.693m over three years to enable vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people to ‘catch up’ and achieve long term positive outcomes post-covid.  BFfC would provide monitoring of this additional funding with the quarterly budget monitoring reports that were submitted to the Committee.

The report explained that the Council had made provision of £1.5m for BFfC transformation funding within its MTFS Delivery Fund for 2021/22, and that for 2022/23 BFfC had submitted business cases totalling £1.26m for Delivery Funding.  These were still subject to review and the report noted that transformation funding was separately provisioned within the Council budget, with agreement of additional funds having no impact on the overall Council budget as agreed by full Council on 23 February 2022.

Resolved –

That the Committee, in its capacity as sole member for BFfC:

a)    Note and agree the increase in the proposed contract sum for 2022/23 to £48.251m which included growth of £1.13m from the provisional contract sum included in the MTFP for FY21/22, for the reasons set out in the report;

b)    Note the Delivery Fund bids as set out in the report, which were in addition to the contract sum;

c)    Agree the Company’s Business Plan as set out at Appendix 1 of the report;

d)    Note the arrangements for monitoring delivery of outcomes from the additional funding provided to BFfC by the Committee on 23 September 2021 as outlined in the report.