(a)

the Diverting Children from Care service area had a clear work plan and a strong team who were dedicated to delivering value for money and were confident of reducing costs by £2.4m by 2013-2014;

(b)

the Project, which was part of the Council’s overall efficiency programme, aimed to divert more children from care, thereby securing better outcomes for vulnerable children and realising significant efficiency savings in the process;

(c)

increasing the number of in house foster carer families would create efficiency savings and would support the reduction of  the number of children in a residential care setting. Over the past 12 months the council had recruited 12 new foster families, improved the skills and resources available to foster carers and had been approached by a number of private sector foster carers about switching to the local authority’s service;

(d)

by moving children from residential settings into a family environment, such as a foster care placement, would create efficiency savings and improve the life chances of these children in care;

(e)

the Council is building partnership working in local communities in the hope of enabling more vulnerable children to remain in their families and local environments; the associated risks of children remaining in their communities  will be managed by experienced social workers;

(f)

the number of 16 – 18 year old children going in to care in the past 12 months had been reduced by 60 per cent, this had been achieved by a project which uses intensive support and mediation, as a result of this success, the project for 2011 – 2012 has been expanded to incorporate  11 – 15 year olds.

(g)

11 – 15 year olds going into care was a common problem nationally with Plymouth having comparable statistics to similar urban authorities;

(h)

Plymouth was trying to prevent an increase in  11 – 15 year olds going into care by providing additional support to parents on dealing with problematic teenagers;

(i)

since May 2011 children in care numbers in Plymouth had reached a plateau; the number had not been reduced as the number of children leaving care was being replaced by a similar number of young people entering the care system;

(j)

despite the number of children in care remaining higher than the targeted number there had been significant efficiencies realised as a result of more children being cared for in a foster care setting.