ACTION
Before Lancashire County Council introduced its Access to Resources Team (ART) it had just one placement finding officer for the whole county.
"This was crazy - Lancashire is the fourth largest local authority in the country and at the time we had well over 1,800 looked-after children," says Annette McNeil, commissioning manager for Start Well - the county's children's services.
So in February 2017 the authority piloted a new approach, initially placing six existing staff into a skeleton ART to focus on placement finding.
The new team were able to log and track referrals providing a much clearer picture of types of placement needed and gaps in provision. Meanwhile, having the time and capacity to seek out the best-value and most suitable placements paid dividends with savings of around £14,000 per week during the pilot phase.
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