Crisis in child social care costing taxpayers millions more
At a recent meeting, the council’s cabinet member for children’s services said his department ended the year with a £5 million overspend
A crisis in the child social care sector is hitting the coffers at Wiltshire Council hard, with the costs of looking after vulnerable children skyrocketing.
In one extraordinary case, the care of a single child is costing council taxpayers over £1.5 million a year, a meeting heard.
At a recent meeting of Wiltshire Council’s Cabinet, Jon Hubbard, the council’s cabinet member for children’s services, said his department ended the year with a £5 million overspend.
But he insisted: “This is not a story of mismanagement. This is the story of a national placement crisis meeting a preset budget that was never set high enough to absorb it.”
He said the bulk of the overspend – £4.4 million – represented the cost of external residential care for children.
“That is not unique to Wiltshire. Across the country, a shortage of suitable homes, rising complexity of need, and a largely private provider market have pushed prices to levels none of us would have predicted,” he said.
“The average external residential placement was budgeted at £3,800 a week. The actual cost came in at around £6,000 a week, a rise of well over half on every single placement.”
And he told how individual cases could ramp up costs for the council.
“During the year, we had to place one young person in secure accommodation,” he said. “That can only happen with the agreement of a court and only in the highest risk situations.
“The cost is £30,000 a week – £1.56 million over a year for a single child.
“One child can move this budget by more than a million pounds.”
He said that costs in supported accommodation were also spiralling.
“We saw an average weekly cost rise by 109 per cent on the year before. The trigger was a change in regulation in September 2004 requiring providers to register with OFSTED.
“That is a long and complex process, and providers left the market almost overnight.
“At exactly the same time, we saw more 16 and 17 year olds – and I must stress, not children who have been with us for years, but new, unplanned, and unexpected young people – presenting as homeless, needing precisely this kind of accommodation.
“Demand rose, supply collapsed.”
He stressed: “We use the most expensive provision only for the children who genuinely need it.
“We are a victim of the national market, not a cause of it.”
He said that to combat rising costs, Wiltshire Council is building its own children’s homes.
“Three properties already secured, the first children already moved in, and our investment in homes for care-experienced young people is already paying back,” he said.
Cllr Gavin Grant, cabinet member for finance, also laid bare some of the related costs facing the council:
The costs associated with young people transitioning into adult social care are £1.721 million, against a budget of £896,000
The average weekly price of independent fostering agency care is £192 higher than the £896 budgeted.
The average weekly price of external residential care is £2,200 higher than the £3,800 budgeted.
After the meeting, Cllr Hubbard told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The safety and wellbeing of children and young people is our absolute priority.
“The budget pressures we have seen this year reflect increasing demand for services, rising placement costs, and the growing complexity of need among some of the children and young people in our care.”
Nationally, councils and their representative bodies have been very clear that rising costs are driving a funding crisis, and many are explicitly asking central government for more money and structural reform of how local services are financed.
A growing number of councils are warning they may not be able to balance budgets without emergency support or further council tax rises.