North Northamptonshire Council leader suggests some parents could be 'taking easy option' and putting children into care

The leader of North Northamptonshire Council has suggested some parents could be ‘taking the easy option’ and putting their children into care.

Cllr Jason Smithers (Con) called the cost of independent placements for children in care “staggering”, as the average cost per child is more than £5,000 a week.

Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT) was set up as a joint service for both West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) and North Northamptonshire Council (NNC). Its formation followed a number of damning Ofsted reports on how children’s services were being run by the now-defunct county council.

The trust is predicted to spend an extra £32m over its £150m budget for 2023/24, with most of the excess costs attributed to expensive placements and high demand.

In a report presented at a joint services meeting with the North and the West, it was revealed that the average cost of a residential placement in 2023/24 was £281,000, or £5,400 per week. It was also noted that some individual plans cost the councils more than £1m, however no information was given on how many packages fell into this category.

Cllr Smithers said: “I’m just trying to get my head around some of these figures. I just wonder, are we just taking a responsibility for some of these children when parents are taking an easy option and just handing children over to us?

“Now I know we have a risk based approach to this through MASH, but the cost of this is staggering. We need to get a grip on what is costing us and how we can manage that.”

WNC’s director for children’s services Rebecca Wilshire confirmed that there was a “robust” process and that all children entering care needed to be there.

She said: “I think the challenge is the market. We certainly have some profiteering within that market and we know that is a national issue that needs to be explored and addressed.

“The more we can do within our local areas around developing our own homes, 16-plus accommodation, the better we start to challenge that.”

Both councils took the decision last year to ‘step in’ to the trust to assess their financial management and provide advice and support amid the spiralling costs of children’s care.

The ‘Circle to Success’ programme, which assesses when children can step down from a high-cost residential placement with support, also delivered £3.7m of savings last year, with a further £8m to come forward in 2024/25. The programme employs external contractors to come in and work with the trust to embed cost-saving approaches whilst delivering positive outcomes for young people.

Cllr Smithers said that, though it was great that efficiencies were being delivered, he was “frustrated” that the trust needed the help of the council’s financial officers and external contractors to identify savings that “one would assume that they’ve got the competency levels to do themselves”.

He added: “My ambition is that all the children in North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire get the very best outcomes in their lives – they’re put in our system and it’s of no fault of their own so we owe it to them to give them the very best.

“The work that is being done is fantastic, but I just want to see a little bit more coming from the trust. It just feels sometimes like they’re waiting for us to jump in and help and I really want to see them be able to push themselves a little bit.

“I’m looking forward to when we get the children of North Northamptonshire back under our control here because then we can really begin to work hard to deliver even better services.”