South West Children’s Alliance

The South West Children’s Alliance (SWCA) has been set up as a collaborative approach to the provision of residential homes for children across the region. It was formerly known as the South West Sufficiency Project.

The 15 councils that are part of the SWCA are committed to working with ethical residential care providers that can supply sustainable, high quality and cost efficient homes to support positive outcomes for the children in our care.

Our priority is to keep children close to family and friends and enable quick and easy access to local support services.

Working together with purpose

As lead council, we will coordinate and support all participating members of the SWCA to establish a more strategic approach to commissioning services. Full implementation is planned for April 2028.

This will include co-designing a new regional purchasing arrangement between local authorities and residential care providers.

Developing a strategic regional framework will enable us to implement a more agile approach to provision and a cohesive response to quality assurance and fee uplifts.

Providers will no longer need to negotiate with separate local authorities and councils will not be competing against each other for services.

Informed by our regional sufficiency strategy, the project is built around 4 key workstreams:

1. Regional purchasing arrangement and fee uplifts
2. Quality assurance and market shaping
3. Workforce development
4. Transparent baseline costing models for a fair cost of care

Objectives

The objectives of the SWCA are to:

• effect real and positive change on future procurement of children’s residential homes
• reshape the market to meet the local and regional needs of our young people
• ensure the sustainable provision of high quality and cost efficient homes
• develop the region’s commissioning excellence
• improve sufficiency and quality of care across the region
• improve local and regional intelligence sharing to inform providers’ strategic expansion plans
• actively seek insights from providers on capacity, expertise, and challenges
• co-create solutions to address gaps in provision
• support existing providers to grow, shape or redesign their local offer to meet emerging needs
• engage with new providers to grow and diversify residential offer
• leverage collective regional spend to build long-term relationships with providers
• implement regionally agreed standard terms and conditions

Future plans

As the work of the SWCA progresses, we expect to incorporate fostering and supported living accommodation in our strategic planning. This will allow for additional pathways or short-term respite to support resilience and prepare young people to live independently as they enter adulthood.

Who we are working with

The following local authorities are part of the SWCA:

1. South Gloucestershire (lead)
2. Bath & North East Somerset
3. Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole
4. Bristol
5. Cornwall
6. Devon
7. Dorset
8. Gloucestershire
9. Isles of Scilly
10. North Somerset
11. Plymouth
12. Somerset
13. Swindon
14. Wiltshire
15. Torbay

Contact information

For further information about the SWCA, contact the project lead Gail Collins on gail.collins@southglos.gov.uk.

The programme sponsor is Chris Sivers and service lead is Ross Chick.