Corporate plan

• 550 children had a Child Protection Plan on 31 March 2023 (752 as at 31 March 2022).
• 313 children are in foster care (March 2023)
• The Council received 4,975 applications for homelessness assistance in 2022 (January to December).
• The budget for adult social care has increased 58.6% since 2015.
• There were 59.6 crimes per 1,000 people (72.4 per 1,000 for Thames Valley) for the period April 2021 – March 2022, Safer Buckinghamshire Partnership Strategic Assessment 2023.
• 89% of adult social care clients were satisfied with the care and support they received - only 6% were unsatisfied.
• 79% of people using Adult Social Care services saying that they had either adequate or as much social contact as they would like (2022/2023).

While most people in Buckinghamshire live independent and healthy lives, some need extra support and protection. We know that the number of children and adults who need this extra help is increasing. There are also rising numbers of people with mental health difficulties, special educational needs, disabilities, and complex needs.

We want to give everyone the best chances in life, so that – together with their families and carers - they are resilient and can identify their own solutions. We will continue to work with our partners, social care providers and communities to innovate and improve our offer of support to vulnerable residents, including helping people recover from illness sooner and achieve their maximum potential, and reducing social isolation and loneliness. In addition, we will be strengthening our recruitment campaign and support offer for foster carers which will enable more of our most vulnerable children to live in a safe, loving, and nurturing home when they cannot live with their birth families.

Our goal is to reduce inequalities and give everyone the support and skills they need to live independent, happy, and fulfilling lives.

We want:

• Children, adults, and families to feel safe and supported to live independent lives
• Our older, disabled, and vulnerable people to receive the right support, at the right time
• A strong housing offer that provides affordable, accessible, sustainable and suitable choices at all life stages

Working with partners, we will:

• Develop and deliver our offer of support for residents who need it most. This includes help with food, energy and essential household costs; support to stay warm; and coordination of community-based initiatives through our Helping Hand service
• Work with the police, PCC and partners to help prevent crime, reduce the fear of crime and understand the issues around women’s safety and fear of violence and adopting a zero-tolerance approach to domestic abuse
• Provide care for all those who are unable to help themselves, working with the NHS to give residents the choice and support to stay in their own home where this is the best option
• Make sure children and adults, particularly those that are vulnerable, are healthy, safe and protected from harm and continue to improve the services we provide, including delivering the Buckinghamshire Health & Wellbeing Strategy: Happier, Healthier Lives strategy
• Work with residents, partners and stakeholders to virtually eliminate rough sleeping, and reduce homelessness, addressing the root causes of both
• Work in partnership with the NHS and voluntary groups to reduce problems such as misuse of drugs and alcohol, aligning services with the NHS where this makes sense
• Work with our partners across the Integrated Care System with a key focus on reducing avoidable admissions to hospital; and improving the hospital discharge experience for residents
• Encourage children in school to adopt healthy lifestyles and encourage them to exercise more, eat a healthy diet and spend more time with their friends and less on the internet
• Work with schools to encourage more cycling and walking to schools through the implementation of school travel plans and through working with the community to put in place measures to support children to travel to school safely and sustainably
• Develop and deliver robust licensing polices for taxi and private hire, alcohol and entertainment and gambling licensing that actively protect and promote public safety and protect children and the vulnerable from harm
• Provide a strategic and coordinated approach to community resilience activity that supports individuals, businesses, community networks and voluntary organisations to behave in a resilient way and act to support other members of the public including developing a resilience toolkit online and providing advice, support and training to community networks and volunteers in emergency management
• Ensure a more consistent approach across the partnership that supports the early identification of, and response to emerging problems that children, young people and their families face
• Increase the number of in-house foster carers by defining a new improved offer to improve recruitment and retention
• Deliver our children’s services transformation programme which will redesign our services around the needs and strengths of children and families, ensuring that children receive a consistent, purposeful and child centred approach wherever they are on their journey of need from early help through to being in care
• Reduce the demand and costs of statutory interventions and promote the wellbeing and resilience of children and families in Buckinghamshire
• Be part of the Delivering Better Value in SEND programme through which 55 local areas are being supported to identify the highest impact changes that can be made to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND, and to optimise the use of resource
• Continue to work on the development of a suite of Edge of Care services for children and young people in order to prevent the need for them to enter care in the first place or to rapidly return them to their families if they do enter
• Increase the number of care leavers with their own tenancies which will reduce our reliance on more costly semi-independent placements