By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
A Nottingham councillor says the council is “crying out” for more foster carers to help address dire costs in its children’s services.
Cllr Cheryl Barnard (Lab), Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education, said costs for a single child in the council’s care can vary from £8,000 to £20,000 per week.
She said the council has been facing “blatant profiteering” from private care firms.
A response to a Freedom of Information request, submitted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), recently revealed the authority paid £61 million to private firms last year, up from £40 million the year before.
The issue was discussed during a Full Council meeting on Monday (November 11).
Cllr Barnard said despite the council’s “enormous achievement” in bringing down the number of children in care, costs have continued to soar.
The number decreased from 732 children in July 2022 to 641 children at the end of September.
“Our transformation work started in Autumn 2022 with a focus on working better to respond to need, supporting children to remain with their own families and increasing our own in-house fostering capacity,” she said.
“Supply constraints and high demand are pushing up costs. The situation is so dire the Department for Education has categorised the risk of market failure in children’s care placements as ‘critical’ to ‘very likely’ in 2023/24.
“We know we have got prices of care costs to address, which is why we are working so hard to recruit more foster carers.”
Cllr Barnard told the LDRS the authority has been “crying out” for more foster carers, because they are both cheaper and result in much better outcomes for children in care.
Over the last decade, capacity to care for the most vulnerable children in the country has increasingly fallen to the private sector.
This is largely because demand for care has grown, while local authority care provision has either not kept pace or has been reduced amid tightening budgets.
During the meeting Cllr Kevin Clark, leader of the Nottingham Independents and Independent Group, said: “The fact is [private firms] know we can’t refuse, we need the service.
“I think the long-term thing we need to get back to is in-house and that would solve a lot of the problems where they can charge whatever they want.”
However Cllr Barnard added: “I agree the private sector does have us in quite a difficult position. They are in a position to charge what they want.
“We are looking at [creating] additional homes, but unfortunately it just isn’t practical in Nottingham to find a number of homes that we need, and also the staffing for those homes is quite difficult.
“Without the private sector we cannot provide placements for these children.
“I am confident that given time our Labour Government will take stronger measures to address blatant profiteering across the market.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said vulnerable children across the country “are being let down at massive financial cost to councils and human cost to young people’s lives”.
“We’re already breaking down barriers to opportunity by investing to recruit more foster carers and kinship carers, as well as providing £400 million to open more children’s homes where they’re most needed,” the spokesperson added.
“For too long, the children’s social care system has been left to fester but we are now determined to deliver meaningful reform once and for all to deliver better life chances for some of the most vulnerable children in our country.”
