St Christopher's begins partnership with Bedfordshire County Council

2 November 2007

We are proud to announce that St Christopher's has now officially begun to run a range of services for children and young people in Bedfordshire:

• residential children’s homes
• Family and Adolescent Support Team (FAST)
• Youth Carers Scheme (YCS).

The residential care service currently comprises three children’s homes. Each of these homes provides medium-to-long-term care and assessments for six 12–16-year-olds. The two homes also offer one emergency bed.

The third home provides four places for young people with challenging behaviour and complex needs using St Christopher's SHARP (specialist homes action research programme) model.

The Family and Adolescent Support Team, which we are managing on behalf of Bedfordshire County Council, provides an intensive support service to troubled young people living with their families.

The Youth Carers Scheme, also run in partnership with the council, is a specialist foster care programme for young people with challenging behaviour.

The three services are working closely together under the title Comprehensive Adolescent Service (CAS). The aims of CAS are

• to provide an appropriate response that is tailored to the needs of each young person
• to reduce Bedfordshire’s need to place young people outside the county.

We were invited to work with Bedfordshire County Council as consultants in January 2005, then this year, the council put the residential services out to tender. The fact that St Christopher’s was chosen as the preferred provider is a measure of our success in running the services for the last two years, and of the good relationship with the council and its staff that we have formed over that time.

We are delighted to welcome the residential care staff from Bedfordshire County Council to St Christopher's, and look forward to working with such high-quality staff.