Assessment of Needs Tool and Digital Platform for Children at Risk of Deprivation of Liberty

The Department for Education (DfE) has awarded a contract for the provision of a validated Assessment of Needs Tool and an integrated digital platform to support the delivery of Home Again via Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs). Home Again brings together children’s social care, health, youth justice, education and other relevant partners to provide earlier, coordinated and evidence-based responses for children and young people (CYP) who are at risk of, or subject to, deprivation of liberty. The contracted solution provides a validated assessment of need tool designed to deliver a holistic view of each child’s needs, risks, strengths and required support. The tool supports the development of multidisciplinary plans through the Home Again service and enables proactive and timely interventions. The integrated digital platform supports secure assessment completion, appropriate multi-agency information sharing, local reporting on activity and outcomes, and the generation of anonymised aggregated data for national analysis. The solution is intended to improve system-wide understanding of this cohort, support commissioning and planning decisions, and provide insights to inform practice approaches that help keep children and young people safe while avoiding unnecessary deprivation of liberty. The contract also supports the generation of learning regarding the implementation of a validated assessment of need tool across different local systems, including organisational, cultural, technical and commercial factors that influence adoption, usability, sustainability and impact within children’s social care, health and youth justice settings. Contract awarded to: Thalamos Limited.