Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of trends in the cost of external residential care placements for looked after children; and what steps she is taking to assist local authorities with meeting those costs.

Annual average cost per resident week for voluntary and private sector care homes for children is published in the ‘Unit Cost of Health and Social Care’ series of publications: http://www.pssru.ac.uk/project-pages/unit-costs/

The Department publishes information on the average weekly unit cost of residential care in the children’s services finance section of the Local Authority Interactive Tool: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait

Sir Martin Narey’s review of children’s residential care (July 2016) recommends taking steps to improve commissioning arrangements among local authorities. Sir Martin finds that better analysis and planning, on a larger scale, when procuring residential care placements would drive down costs and ensure better outcomes for young people.

The Government published its initial response to Sir Martin’s report in ‘Putting Children First’ and will respond in full shortly. In addition, through the £200million Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme we are looking to support new larger, regional commissioning arrangements. I announced the latest round of the programme last week. The press notice can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/education-secretary-announces-extra-investment-in-social-care