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Councils’ collaboration to support care experienced children is recommissioned with new contractor
Tuesday 25 March 2025
The Behaviour Clinic, a trauma informed care and therapy service, is the new contractor supporting the recommissioned collaboration between Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Councils via the Cwm Taf Morgannwg Regional Partnership, offering specialist therapy-led provision for care experienced children in a bid to promote stability in their care placements.
The service, named ‘Children Looked After Specialist Support Service’ (CLASS), has superseded the former collaborative provision, ‘Multi Agency Permanence Support Service’ (MAPSS), which ended in January 2025.
Funded by Welsh Government’s Health and Social Care Regional Integration Fund, supported by the Cwm Taf Morgannwg Regional Partnership, the new contract commenced in January and will end in March 2027, with the option to extend on an annual basis for a further four years, subject to approval and available funds.
“We are proud to contribute to the vision of high-quality, specialist therapeutic services for care-experienced young people in Cwm Taf Morgannwg. The creation of the CLASS service reflects a shared commitment to ensuring young people with complex needs receive the specialist interventions they need to thrive. We look forward to developing this service and working closely with young people, carers, and practitioners to promote stability and positive outcomes that can help young people have a bright future.”
Across the county borough, the former service MAPSS supported 157 children with varying needs – including those in foster, residential, adoptive, and special guardianship placements. The provision offered training to carers and residential staff based on trauma informed care, as well as provided a range of other relevant workshops to support their caring role.
Statistics from March 2023 to March 2024 highlight a notable reduction in the number of children who experienced three or more care placements in one year, with data revealing a decrease from 10.8 per cent in March 2023 to 6.2 per cent in March 2024. This spotlights the success of a combination of approaches which includes MAPSS intervention.
In alignment with MAPSS, CLASS will continue to support care experienced children who can often present with increasingly complex and challenging emotional or behavioural needs that can lead to care placement breakdowns.
Its aim is to encourage positive relationships and stability within the care placement by improving the self-management and coping strategies of the children and young people, as well as providing an array of therapies to support them and their carers.
“CLASS promotes secure attachments, enabling children and young people to maintain placements with their carers. The provision encourages them to feel safe, to develop trusted bonds and relationships, which can only lead to positive growth and resilience in the future. “CLASS is aligned to the local authority’s Corporate Parent Strategy and the national Corporate Parenting Charter – ‘A Promise for Wales’, which we signed in February 2024. This is a promise on our behalf to ensure that care experienced children and young people have the same opportunity to fulfil their potential as their peers. We have and always will relentlessly strive for an equity of opportunity.”