Children in Care

(asked on 22nd March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional financial support his Department provides to local authorities that experience a significant increase in the number of looked-after children under their care.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 27th March 2019

Funding for children’s services is made available through the Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS), which gives local authorities flexibility to target spending according to local needs and to fulfil their statutory responsibilities, including services for looked-after children.

Over the five-year period to 2019-20, councils have access, through the LGFS, to over £200 billion to deliver local services, including children’s services. Core spending power has increased from £45.1 billion in 2018-19 to £46.4 billion in 2019-20.

Social worker caseload data is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/childrens-social-work-workforce-2018. The average caseload per children and family social worker was 17.4 cases (based on full-time equivalent counts) in 2018. Specific data on the ratios for social workers working with looked after children is not available.

Along with my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, we regularly meet key stakeholders, including Directors of Children’s Services, to discuss children’s services. Officials in regional teams also meet local authorities regularly and the most recent meeting with Durham County Council was earlier this month.

The department recognises how important it is to speak directly with those who are delivering services for children and families and we are working between now and the Spending Review to get a sharper and more granular picture of children’s services costs and pressures.

We are also, through our ‘Strengthening Families, Protecting Children’ programme, investing £84 million over the next 5 years to support up to 20 local authorities with high or rising demand for children’s social care to work more effectively with their most vulnerable families.

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