Children's social care is a multi-million pound market. During the last10 years expenditure by local authorities on children's homes alone hasincreased by nearly 80 per cent. These rising costs are cited as a keyreason why children's social services departments blew their budgets by100m in the last financial year. Yet despite a massive drive toimprove standards, questions remain over whether children's needs arebeing met.
Today (Wednesday, 10 January) the Commission for Social Care Inspectionpublishes its State of Social Care report. This annual stock take showsthat although standards in children's residential care are improvingyear-on-year, there are still significant areas of underperformance. Asour statistical analysis on page 18 illustrates, 80 per cent of nationalminimum standards were met by children's homes in 2006 compared to 68per cent in 2004.
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