Rising costs hit Dorset's budget for Children's Services
That's despite a 4.5% increase taking it to £77.8million
Dorset's executive director of children’s services says she is confident of delivering good services despite an effective £2.2m cut in the budget for the next financial year.
Councillors have been told that although the amounts set aside for next year has increased by 4.5% to £77.8million (a £3.86m uplift), many costs have risen by higher amounts, leaving the service with less to spend.
Director Theresa Leavy said that in addition to budget pressures the service is also committed to making ‘efficiency savings’ of almost £13m over three years.
Ms Leavy told councillors that among the improvements the service wants to continue is more early intervention in families where there are challenges, offering support to keep children at home and in school, where that is the best solution.
This is often managed with the help of closer working with other agencies involved with families, including adult services and mental health teams.
She said she was also committed to trying to attract more foster carers across the county and a review of the service, including payments, was planned in the coming months.
Many foster carers in Dorset area are already beyond normal retirement age and recruiting new foster parents has proved difficult – sometimes resulting in children having to be cared for out of the county.
Ms Leavy said the service has also had the additional pressure of dealing with refugee children, with the numbers of unaccompanied minors rising from nine to forty-four with another 24 expected to be on the way.
The director said that the Safeguarding Families Together project, which involves multi-agency working, was progressing well in the Chesil, Dorchester and West Dorset areas and would eventually be rolled out to the rest of the county.
She said the pressures for the Dorset children’s workforce included almost 10,000 children in education with additional needs; more than 520 who were being home educated and over 400 children legally in the care of the council, often living with foster carers or with specialist providers.
The largest amount from the department’s budget of £77.8m next year is expected to be £57.74million for ‘care and protection’ work where children and young people are, generally, not living family members but may be with foster parents or in residential accommodation.
Cllr Bill Pipe said he found it outstanding that there were no cuts in services being proposed “given the financial straits we find ourselves in, both locally and nationally.”