Yorkshire council eager to tackle soaring cost of caring for vulnerable children

Bradford Council said the expense has ballooned in recent years, as the demand for care and the cost of providing it has risen, while a shortage of social workers has forced it to rely on expensive agency staff, which currently cost around £2m a month.

Its beleaguered Children’s Services department was allocated £138m in 2021/22, but went £15.5m over budget and said this was “largely due to agency staffing costs”.

The council has been stripped of control over children’s social care by the Government and ordered to set up a trust to take over, as it has failed to make a significant improvement since being rated inadequate by Ofsted in 2018.

It is setting up Bradford Children’s Trust, which will be chaired by former Care Quality Commission Director Eileen Milner and tasked with providing care to vulnerable children from April 2023, but must continue to provide the funding and hold it to account.

According to its updated Medium Term Financial Plan, the council is aiming to reduce the amount spent on children’s social care, from £45m a year to £35m by 2025/26.

It is planning to implement an improvement plan which “reduces costs of delivery”, by hiring more full-time social workers and reducing the number of children who need to be placed in care homes with effective support for their families.

However, the Labour-run council has become increasingly reliant on the owners of privately-run care homes to take in children over the last five years and seen the cost rise by 196 per cent.

Bradford Council, which is legally required to support vulnerable children, paid companies £7.5m to provide residential care to 75 children in 2017/18 and after seeing year-on-year increases, it spent £22.2m on placements for 176 children in 2021/22.

It came after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found a chronic shortage of care home places has led to “elevated prices” and “significant profits” for private providers.

The CMA also said councils are in an “inherently weak” position when negotiating prices, as they must make sure a placement is provided for every child, often under “considerable time pressure”.

Ofsted has said on numerous occasions that a shortage of full-time social workers, who can see children regularly and form relationships, is the main issue which has prevented Bradford Council from making significant improvements to adult social care.

And in June, the council was heavily criticised when it was revealed that opportunities to save toddler Star Hobson were missed before she was murdered by her mother’s partner in September 2020, and one of the agency social workers involved in her case was found to have left without completing an important assessment.

A recent report shows that since her death, the number of agency workers has increased from 136 to 169 and they now make up almost 40 per cent of social workers.

They cost the council more than £20m in 2021/22, up from £4.3m in 2018/19.