Lib Dem Windsor & Maidenhead has invested £1.8m in its first home for young people, dramatically cutting reliance on costly external placements.
Windsor & Maidenhead are focused on ensuring the right care is in place at the right time. This is care that is appropriate, suitable and delivered with compassion and keeps young people as close as possible to their wider support networks.
Providing high quality compassionate care while achieving savings is becoming increasingly hard as demand and complexity continues to rise. This has led them to explore different ways to provide high quality local care that is less reliant on the external market.
As part of this strategy, last month they opened the doors to our first council-owned and operated children's home near Windsor. This marks a significant step towards creating more local, nurturing care placements for our most vulnerable young people.
For an investment of £1.8m and a return on investment period of five years, this also marks the beginning of developing direct access to our own care provision which makes us less reliant on the external market, where costs are high and quality can vary.
That this project has moved from being words on a page to a physical entity in such a short space of time, we believe, has been remarkable. It has taken us 18 months from approving the initial business case in June 2024, getting the keys to the property last November and opening the doors to the first resident shortly.
It has been a tremendous effort to move so quickly and is testament to our focus on team working, delivery and getting things done.
Alongside providing first-class accommodation and support to some of the young people we have a responsibility to look after, creating our new residential home also means we can keep the young people in the borough, close to their school, friends and wider support networks.
Our emphasis has been on making it a real home and we believe we have succeeded on that front. It is a warm, welcoming environment on a safe residential street that will provide the young people who live there with stability, support and the opportunity to thrive.
Often, when you picture a ‘care home', a cold and sterile ‘facility' may be the first image to come to mind. However, this is the opposite – it is essentially a family home.
We wanted it to reflect what children who have experienced care felt was important, so we involved Kickback, our Children in Care Council, and used their feedback and ideas to create an environment that includes the choice of furniture, décor and even the name, Oak House. Every detail has been well thought through.
While the building itself is impressive, it is colleagues from Achieving for Children – who provide children and young people's services on our behalf – who work there and who will have the biggest positive impact on the young people who take up residence.
This follows the council’s foster care support being rated as ‘good' by Ofsted earlier this year as part of an overall ‘good' Ofsted rating for children's services and an ‘outstanding' rating for support to care leavers.
The past few decades have seen fewer council-run residential homes for young people and more reliance on private providers. This often is not the best option especially if it is far away from family and friends. It also puts huge pressure on council budgets.
The council is actively taking steps to turn the tide on that trend in Windsor & Maidenhead by providing a nurturing environment where young people can feel truly at home.