National children’s placement strategy required to remove...
The financial peril faced by many councils up and down the country is receiving significant public attention with some considering issuing (or have already issued) Section 114 notices. Local government faces a number of pressures and it is clear that the quantum of funding is insufficient, however, there are some common themes being raised by those with the biggest financial pressures.
Children’s services present one of the biggest challenges for local government finances. Recent research from the LGA has highlighted the exorbitant costs charged for children’s social care placements with £10,000 or more per week becoming common. Local authorities are the sole purchasers of these placements, yet they are often held to ransom by private providers who can charge as they wish due to lack of placements available. Demand for these placements far outstrips supply and providers can therefore pick and choose which referrals to accept and set the price accordingly. It cannot be right that the largest 20 independent providers of children’s social care homes made more than £300 million of profit last year, every penny of which came directly from the public purse. This is clearly not in children’s best interests.
Local authorities are now reaching a tipping point and some have even gone beyond, often citing children’s social care or high needs costs as the biggest pressures. Some authorities are in a more precarious position than others, but every local authority shares the same real concern for our financial future. We need urgent government action to turn the tide and create a more sustainable system, with both short term and long-term solutions. Locally or regionally agreed commissioning arrangements alone cannot solve this problem, instead we need a comprehensive national placement strategy to ensure the right homes are available when we need them so children can stay close to their communities.
This must be accompanied by a national set of rules that allows for greater transparency on finance and quality so that the system is rooted in the needs of children, rather than shareholders. There is no silver bullet, but a rebalancing of the system is needed based on ethical provision. Those organisations who operate in this way, including some private providers, will have no problems working to a fair set of national rules. However, the risk from large private providers, based on private equity models, who are clearly profiteering must be removed from the system. These business models should have no place in meeting the needs of our children and young people.
We simply cannot continue as we are.
This column was first published in the MJ on 13 December 2023