Up to £400k spent on just one child’s care as council spends millions on external agencies
UP TO £400,000 a year could be being paid for looking after just one of Cardiff’s children in care as the council spends millions of pounds every year on external agencies.
Cardiff Council has spent £23m each year on average since 2014 on private companies or charities to provide fostering or residential placements for the city’s looked-after children.
Last year the most expensive cost for a child’s residential care at an external agency was £7,800 per week – which would cost £405,600 at that rate for all 52 weeks of the year.
The number of Cardiff’s lookedafter children has increased over the last five years – with some of the city’s children being sent as far afield as Liverpool or the east of England for care.
The money spent on private care placements for looked-after children is also rising – while placements provided by the council are a fraction of the cost.
From a total of 930 children at July 7 who were looked after by Cardiff Council, 326 were placed outside the city and 155 of those were in neighbouring areas.
A further 51 out-of-county children were placed with either their parents or kinship carers.
Children taken into specialist homes or secure units have often have complex issues, with some suffering the worst forms of physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect.
This leads to behaviours which are too challenging for them to be placed at a foster home, which means they sometimes have to be sent across the UK to receive specialist care.
They often need to be monitored 24/7 to prevent the risk of substance abuse, self-harm, or falling into the clutches of drugs or sex trafficking gangs.
Over the past five years the council has used a range of providers to care for its looked-after children, including UK-wide organisations such as Action for Children and Welsh providers such as Genus Care.
Cardiff Council has also sent its looked-after children to local authorities in Wales such as Bridgend, Caerphilly, Neath Port Talbot and Vale of Glamorgan, and in England, such as Milton Keynes and Peterborough.
In 2018-19, Cardiff Council spent £11,715,857 on external agencies providing residential placements and £16,089,741 on fostering agencies.
It had 514 children with private fostering agencies and 83 in private residential placements.
By contrast the council spent just £2,976,486 on “in-house” placements that year.
There were far fewer children in placements provided by the council – 103 – but the average cost of this accommodation was significantly lower than for private agencies.
The average weekly cost for “inhouse” placements in 2018-19 was just £185 compared to £781 for a fostering agency and £3,394 for an external residential care placement.
The most expensive weekly cost for a council-provided placement in 201819 was £658 – and was for fostering care.
Cardiff Council has said it wants five new residential children’s homes to open in the city this year so children can be cared for closer to home and to save money.
The council also plans to launch a new fostering service so more lookedafter children can be cared for in the city.
One Cardiff care home – Ty Storrie, which used to be managed by an external provider – has been managed by the council since June.
A new commissioning strategy for looked-after children will be debated by the council’s ruling body in September.
Councillor Graham Hinchey, cabi