Council to consider new children’s homes in city
NEW children’s homes for Cardiff will be considered to stop hundreds of the city’s most vulnerable youngsters being sent miles away due to lack of facilities.
Cardiff council’s cabinet will be asked to start a building programme of children’s homes in the city in the next 12 months following an investigation into how many looked-after youths are being given out-of-county placements.
The council will also be asked if Greenhill Special School in Rhiwbina, which currently only takes boys, could admit girls so they can be looked after within the Cardiff, and to develop strategies for recruiting and retaining social workers and foster carers.
Of the 800 looked-after children in Cardiff council’s care, 244 are placed out of county, according to the latest figures. Cardiff is one of the few areas in Wales which places children aged five and younger out of county and in independent placements, a report by the council’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee has revealed.
The report, which was discussed by the committee yesterday, says the lack of placements for looked-after children in Cardiff needs to be addressed.
It says: “The overwhelming increase in cases coming forward are concerned with neglect with significant increases in domestic violence, issues which are increasingly highlighted as a result of the support that is provided as part of early intervention services.
“Cardiff needs to have considerably more placements than it currently has and where possible should utilise its own housing stock. The increasing complexity of cases and the growing numbers of children are impacting on both the availability of appropriate placements. As a result the pre-matching and planning of placements is becoming crucial to the effective placement of children particularly in emergency situations.”
Figures show there were 244 lookedafter children from Cardiff in out-ofcounty care placements on July 21 last year. The majority of those children – a total of 155 – had been placed with an agency foster carer outside Cardiff, while 38 youngsters were in a children’s home outside the area.
In September 2017 Cardiff council was responsible for 796 looked-after children, up from 557 in 2012-13.
Councillors have warned the number of looked-after children in Cardiff could increase to 920 by March 2019.
Investment in more children’s homes should be looked into as an Invest to Save project, which use Welsh Government funding, the report says. The report also calls for all early intervention and prevention initiatives done by the council to be reorganised under the control of children’s services.
Savings made by returning lookedafter children back to Cardiff should be reinvested into preventative and early help initiatives, the report says.
Cardiff’s social services is overspending year on year and the report said this “is likely to continue for some time”.
When the council’s budget was discussed in February, a total overspend in social services of more than £3.9m for 2017-18 was predicted.
Councillor Graham Hinchey, Cardiff council’s cabinet member for children and families, said the authority will explore “every possible way” of maximising the number of lookedafter children placed in the city.
He said: “Wherever possible we place children in Cardiff and we have local arrangements and agreements in place with education, health, housing and other key partners to support the care they receive.
“First and foremost we have to ensure that placements are fully tailored to meet the complex, varied and diverse needs of the individual and there is no single area in UK that has the range of provision to meet every possible care need.
“Where we access out-of-county care we have robust arrangements in place to ensure that they are able to meet the educational, health and social needs of our looked-after children to the fullest extent possible.”
Mr Hinchey added the vast majority of out-of-county placements used by the council were within 20 miles of Cardiff.