A council is to close a flagship foster care service after a landmark employment tribunal ruled that two carers should be treated employees.

Glasgow City Council is to tell the city's health and social care Integration Joint Board (IJB) that the intensive Treatment Foster Care (TFC) service was failing and provided poor value for money.

It is insisting the decision has nothing to do with the tribunal which ruled against the council in August, meaning that James and Christine Johnstone, a husband and wife team who took on the care of very troubled children, must be treated as employees of the council.

Glasgow is currently appealing the decision, which applies to the Johnstones and another nine current foster families and five more who have left the TFC service.

The service was launched nine years ago, offering intensive health and social care support to carers prepared to take on the care of children who had exhausted other fostering options and had a high level of care needs, behavioural problems, and had suffered repeated moves or violent or traumatic upbringings. Most were on the verge of having to be taken into secure care.

However, in a briefing prepared for the IJB's meeting next Wednesday, the council's chief social work officer Susanne Millar said a review of the service had been carried out which had shown it was not working.

Of another 26 TFC projects launched in the UK since 2002, only three are still operating, she says.

Meanwhile the Glasgow placements while costly are not delivering good outcomes for "hard to manage" adolescents, Ms Millar says. "A randomised control trial of TFC with adolescents within the UK care system has concluded no significant overall additional benefit of TFC for these young people compared to being in a usual care placement on all key outcomes," she says.

"TFC is an expensive approach that unfortunately has failed to secure the scale of outcomes commensurate with the investment made."

The briefing says children receiving TFC were often going on to suffer further changes of placement and had a continued need for expensive care packages.

Glasgow is appealing the Johnstones' Employment Tribunal victory, but should that appeal fail then the nine current foster families involved in the scheme will have to be treated as employees for redundancy purposes, the paper warns.

The Johnstones are also currently pursuing a tribunal claim alleging they had suffered financial loss as a result of whistleblowing. This will only go ahead of the earlier tribunal claim is upheld at appeal as they need to be employees to take the action.

While the council appeals their earlier result, they have continued to be paid £2,461 every 28 days, the equivalent of £30,762 a year, Ms Millar says. While eight other foster families are currently also being paid, the Herald understands only one child is currently receiving a TFC service.

Should The Johnstones employee status be upheld at a final hearing, Ms Millar warns the IJB, there are significant implications for the council as an employer. These include paying the national minimum wage, statutory holiday leave and rest breaks, sick pay and employer pension contributions.

The report recommends the IJB approve the closure of the TFC service and direct the Council's chief executive to resolve the remaining staffing issues.

The Johnstones are members of the union Independent Workers of Great Britain. They said they were shocked by the council's move. In a statement issued through the IWGB, they said:"We are surprised at this turn of events after the tribunal victory and are consulting with our lawyer regarding the implications."

A spokesman for Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership said: “A wholesale review of treatment foster care (TFC) has indicated that the service has failed to deliver the results we had hoped for.

“The review identified that the outcomes from the service do not justify the expense of the delivering the service.

“There was no additional benefit for vulnerable young people compared to usual care placements, real difficulties were encountered in being able to move young people on, with a continued use of high cost placements.

“In the circumstances, as we seek to ensure services are effective and provide value for money, it is appropriate to recommend that the service is discontinued.

“Although entirely separate from this review process, treatment foster care has also been the focus of an employment tribunal that potentially creates significant implications for those involved in the service.

“If the appeal against the tribunal decision is unsuccessful there would be a variety of practical consequences that would arise from considering treatment foster carers as employees.”