Extra £7.5m for Nottinghamshire’s looked after children

Nottinghamshire County Council is spending an additional £7.5 million this year to meet a sharp rise in the number of children taken into care and requiring residential or foster care placements.

The council is the latest local authority to set out the costs of a nationwide trend, where a rise in looked after children (LAC) has pushed almost 90 per cent of councils with child social care responsibilities over budget.

A new council finance report shows that 875 children were looked after by the local authority as of 31 March 2019, compared with 797 as of 31 March 2018, resulting in higher than expected cost pressures on the Children & Young People’s budget. Nottinghamshire County Council is set to lobby the government about growing funding pressures.

Richard Jackson, chairman of the council’s new Finance & Major Contracts Management Committee, said: “We will invest the additional money required to ensure the best possible care is provided to the children looked after by Nottinghamshire County Council. There is no greater responsibility for a local authority than to identify vulnerable children needing our support and protection, and ensure that they are provided with a living environment where they are as safe as they can be.”

“This is our immediate, most important priority, but beyond that, we will also continue working with other partners who provide children’s care services, to identify why there is such a stark increase in children needing support across the country.

“Even before this additional spending, our budget for children and young people’s services was set at £127 million this year. Additional investment is a short-term answer to this spike in demand, but in the longer term, we will examine the way we spend money across all children and young people’s services, and other budgets, to see if there are different approaches that could reduce the number of children reaching a stage where they require urgent interventions.”

The Local Government Association reported in January that 133 out of 152 councils responsible for children’s services spent more than they had originally budgeted for in 2017-18, an estimated £807 million in total.