Councillor Jemima Laing (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care, Culture and Communications) introduced the item:

a)     The report laid out the challenges that the Council faced in relation to Children’s Services, particularly placements, also being faced by many other local authorities across the country;

b)    It captured the financial context, challenges and strategic efforts to address the needs of children in Plymouth;

c)     The budget for young people and families was £60.334 million, with £36.725 million allocated for placement costs, but as of June 2024, the forecast expenditure for placements was £41.417 million, largely due to the higher than expected number of children in care;

d)    There were 521 children in care, 33 more than had been budgeted for, and there were more children in external residential placements and unregistered placements than anticipated;

e)     The average cost of a residential placement was £6,182 per week, but for children with complex needs, this could rise to £16,000 per week, and some placements were costing over £40,000 per week;

f)      Finding suitable foster placements for children remained a challenge;

g)     The Council had prevented 55 children from entering care in recent months, and had supported nine more to return home;

h)    The Family Homes for Children programme was focusing on recruiting more in-house foster carers to reduce reliance on expensive external placements, and had identified £1.53 million of potential savings for the 2024/25 financial year, with just over £500,000 already achieved through positive placement moves;

i)      Children’s Services continued to strengthen in-house fostering, exploring options for directly providing children’s residential care, as well as supporting the reunification of children with their birth families where safe and possible;

j)      The Council had little to no bargaining power in relation to the cost of a lot of placements;

k)     She would be speaking to government to lobby for much needed changes to the sector;

l)      People should be shocked at the stark reality of how the market had developed in the past ten years, when remembering this was in relation to looking after the most vulnerable people in society.

Temilola Salimon (Service Director for Children, Young People and Families) added:

m)   Residential arrangements were being reviewed weekly;

n)    Locally and residentially foster carer numbers were low, and this was trying to be understood.

In response to questions, supported by David Haley (Director of Children’s Services), it was added:

o)    Foster carers coming forward didn’t have the experience or confidence to home children with challenging emotional needs and/or trauma;

p)    A good financial package was offered to foster carers;

q)    Phase two of the outcomes of the fostering summit would include looking at how to do fostering differently;

r)     Work on increasing foster carers was beginning to show increases in people going through the process of becoming foster carers;

s)     There were realistic challenges, but the Council was in the right places trying to improve the situation;

t)     Evidence that work within early intervention and prevention, as well as alignment of resources in family hubs was starting to have an impact on reducing the level of care families required.

Councillor Evans OBE (Leader of the Council) added:

u)    Intervention from government on cost of care was required and he would take these issues to the LGA and other forums;

v)     Every time Children’s Services budget was allowed to grow, it deprived other areas of the Council from being able to do their work;

Councillor Jemima Laing (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care, Culture and Communications) added:

w)   The service was relentlessly looking at ways to tackle financial pressure and reports would continue to come to Cabinet to be open and transparent about the issue.

Cabinet agreed to note the report.