Issue - meetings

Chris Bush, Commissioning Director for Children’s Care and Support, presented the report and explained that the Council was required to have an Emergency Duty Team for Children (EDT) to meet the statutory duty to safeguard children and respond to referrals out-of-hours for children at risk of harm or in need of emergency care. 

A review of the options on how this EDT service would be provided had been undertaken, including the benefits and risks of each option, the full details of which were set out in the report.  The review had resulted in in a recommendation for the future procurement of the Children’s EDT service to be procured as a new service alongside neighbouring local authorities through an open tender exercise (option 3) as set out in the report.

The Board:

(i)  Agreed to enter into a new three-year shared service arrangement with the London Boroughs of Redbridge, Waltham Forest and Havering for the delivery of the four-borough Children’s Emergency Duty Team from the 1 April 2017; and

(ii)  Agreed a total contract value for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham of £691,231.49, with the annual amounts anticipated to be in the order of:

2017/18 - £228,398.26
2018/19 - £230,403.76
2019/20 - £232,429.47.