By Richard Johnstone | 27 November 2014
Auditors say the Department for Education is not able to hold local authorities to account for their spending on children in care because central government does not have indicators to measure the effectiveness of services.
In an examination of the system for children in care, the National Audit Office found that councils spent £2.5bn in 2012/13 supporting children in foster and residential care, a real-terms increase of 3% since 2010/11. In total, 68,110 children were looked after at the end of March 2013, with around 75% are in foster care.
However, auditors highlighted that the department does not have indictors to measure effectiveness, and there is a lack of understanding of what contributes towards the increasing cost of care.
In 2012/13, authorities spent on average between £131,000 and £135,000 on residential care per child and between £29,000 and £33,000 on foster care per child, with variation both between local authorities and by type of provider. The department is aware of these variations in cost but not all of the reasons for them. Without a full understanding of the reasons for variations in cost the department and local authorities will not be able to reduce them, the NAO warned.
Earlier this year, the department launched an innovation programme to learn about what works in commissioning to improve outcomes. This comes after the lack of progress since 2009 in reducing the number of children who had more than one care placement in a year, or cutting the amount placed more than 20 miles from home.
Auditor general Amyas Morse said most children are taken into care because of abuse and neglect, but too many of them are not getting the right placements the first time.
‘If their complex and challenging learning and development needs are not correctly assessed and tackled, the result is likely to be significant long-term detriment to the children themselves as well as cost to society. No progress has been made in the last four years,’ he said.
‘If the department is to break this pattern, then it needs to use its new innovation programme to understand what works, especially in terms of early intervention.’
However, children and families minister Edward Timpson said the NAO had produced a ‘fundamentally flawed and misleading analysis of the government’s work to improve the lives of some of our most vulnerable children’.
He added: ‘It is a fact that since 2010, children in care are doing better at school and absences from school have decreased. Foster children can also now stay at home until the age of 21, and this year a record number of children found places in stable, loving homes through adoption.’
