Mounting financial pressure on care service for young

THE department with the secondbiggest budget at Leicestershire County Council is the only one to declare an overspend in 2017/18. But when the cash is being spent on caring for vulnerable young people, “that’s just how it has to be”.

Councillor Ivan Ould, cabinet member for children and young people, has explained why the county’s children’s and young people’s services, which has a budget of £70.5 million, overspent by £2.4 million in the last financial year.

Outlining the challenges his department faces and the difficult decisions he often has to make, Coun Ould said: “We have a budget of £70.5 million and a savings target of £6.4 million. We’re also faced with a situation where we have more children than ever coming into care and no way of knowing or predicting how many people will need our help each year.

“We look after these children when they have no one else and that is why we are here.

“Unfortunately, finance does come into it and if we end up over- spending because we’ve cared for a child, that’s just how it has to be.”

Over the past five years the number of looked-after children for which the authority is responsible has risen by 47 per cent. In March 2012, there were 375 children in care. In March 2018, there were 553.

The expense involved in caring for young people is difficult to calculate and plan ahead for. Children and young people often present with little prior warning, leaving the council needing to make arrangements at short notice. Foster families are not always available and residential care placements are costly.

Coun Ould said: “To give some idea, 40 per cent of the budget spent last year was spent on 10 per cent of children.

“That goes some way to explaining how difficult it is to plan financially. I’ve heard of a situation where one council was in competition with 26 different authorities for a residential place for a young person. It was the only place available, it was out of the area and the authority in question ended up spending £9,500 a week to place the young person there.

“We’re approaching a point where the market isn’t there any more, but the demand still is.

“One young lady locally needed specialist care, we didn’t have anyone available, the IFA (Independent Fostering Agency) didn’t have a suitable placement. She ended up in residential care, which was not the right place for her to go, but the only place she could go and that cost the authority somewhere in the region of £250,000 for a year. It wasn’t a decision we wanted to make, but we had to make it. The young lady had to go somewhere.”

Coun Ould can cite numerous examples of times the authority has stepped in. A lot of the young people the council helps have complicated needs. Each child’s case is assessed individually in an attempt to offer them a safe and settled environment.

One of the challenges faced by the council is foster families signing up to neighbouring local authorities or foster agencies.

“I was adopted myself, so I have a level of understanding when it comes to how these young people are feeling,” Coun Ould said.

“We want to keep them in their own communities, in familiar surroundings. We’re constantly trying to generate new people coming into the foster care system, but we’re at a big disadvantage because we can’t offer as much financially as other local authorities.

“There are 600 foster families in the county that are registered elsewhere and caring for children from other areas.

“Feedback from our foster parents is always very good, they feel well supported in their role, but we know that other places can pay people more.

“I can’t praise the people who foster and provide a home for our looked-after young people enough.

“It takes a special kind of person to foster and we are lucky to have lots of families willing to do so but there are three groups of children we struggle to place, teenage mums with their babies, sibling groups that need to stay together and special needs children.

“We also have a situation where the number of children coming into care is increasing and we have a number of our foster parents approaching retirement age.

“It’s a challenge to have enough potential homes for the young people we have a responsibility to look after.”