Financial impact modelling support

The Children and Families Act (2014) introduced a 26-week target for all care proceeding cases to be concluded. Data from 20212 shows the average duration of a care or supervision case was 45 weeks, only 23% of cases were disposed of within 26 weeks. The inability to resolve cases under PLO within or close to the statutory timeframe of 26 weeks, poses significant problems for the system as a whole in ensuring vulnerable children and families receive appropriate decisions in a timely manner. Initial work by Mutual Ventures Ltd from December 2021 to April 2022 (funded by DfE) sought to understand the impact of delays in care proceedings on children's services through the prism of financial costs. A direct output of that programme of work was construction of a modelling tool to analyse the financial impact of family court delays on children's services, populated with the CST/LA cohort to test assumptions, validate and generate outputs. DfE would like a provider to support LAs to use this tool, so that LAs can see where their inefficiencies are and take actions to reduce delays and make financial savings. The route to market was the CCS Management Consultancy Framework.