Children in Care
(asked on 18th October 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will estimate the average cost to a local authority of placing a child in the care system.
Estimating the average cost to a local authority of placing a child in the care system is complicated by a number of issues. For example, the costs relating to a particular child are determined by the length of time that they remain looked after. This will be, in part, determined by age on entry. Evidence shows that, proportionally, the number of children starting to be looked after aged 16 and over has been increasing in recent years: 16 percent of all children who started to be looked after during the year ending 31 March 2015 were aged 16 or over. For the year ending 31 March 2016, the proportion was 18 percent.1
Costs also vary across placement types. Evidence shows that the average costs per resident week for a local authority care home for children are around £3,000.2 The cost of foster care for children is estimated at around £600 per child per week on average.
Local authorities are required to submit annual budget and outturn statements about their spending on children’s services to the Secretary of State for Education.
The most recent annual outturn figures can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/section-251-outturn-2014-to-2015-data
Total local authority expenditure on looked after children is broken down across a number of areas including, for example, total expenditure on residential care, fostering services, and leaving care support services.
This information can be combined with information on the numbers of looked after children in each local authority to gain insight into average local authority expenditure per looked after child. Table LAA1 of the “Children Looked After in England including adoption” Statistical First Release shows the number of looked after children at 31 March each year by local authority. This can be found at:
Research supported by grants from Central Government and others present more detailed cost estimates. 3 This estimates the costs of, for example, deciding a child needs to be looked after, care planning, placement finding, maintaining a placement, and transition to leaving care services. The estimated costs of these processes are published, broken down by classifications of different levels of need, by New Economy here:
The Department for Education also publishes weekly unit costs of looked after children, fostering, and residential care in the Local Authority Interactive Tool (LAIT). This shows figures annually and by local authority.
It can be found here in the children’s service finance section:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait
Sources
1 Children Looked After in England including adoption, Statistical First Release, table C1
2 PSSRU (2015). Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2015
http://www.pssru.ac.uk/project-pages/unit-costs/2015/index.php
3 Ward. H., Holmes. L., and Soper, J. (2008). Costs and consequences of placing children in care. Jessica Kingsley Publishers