Purpose

The County Council has a funding allocation
available to enable adaptations and extensions to be carried out to
properties owned by West Sussex approved foster carers, kinship
carers and special guardian carers. These property adaptations
support carers to offer a wider range or greater number of
placements for children, or a permanent placement for a specific
child or children, thereby helping meet the significant sufficiency
challenges currently facing the County Council. This is a common
approach used nationally across local authority children’s
services to improve outcomes for children through supporting them
to remain in family environments, as well as reducing costs
associated with more expensive forms of placements.
 
Funding for carrying out property adaptations
is awarded as a grant to carers whose proposals meet the specific
criteria; approval is now sought to allocate funding to adapt four
properties.

Decision

The Cabinet Member for Children and Young
People, Learning and Skills has approved a total of £570,000
(£431,000 from the Carer Adaptations line in the capital
programme pipeline, and £139,000 as a revenue contribution
from the Children With Disabilities Service) to be granted to 4
individual carers to adapt their freehold owned properties to care
for West Sussex children.