Kent in talks to outsource children's social care

A report on how the local authority is dealing with a huge rise in arrivals of unaccompanied children over the past six months as a result of the refugee crisis reveals that services for vulnerable children in Kent are at "breaking point" due to further increases in numbers being received.

In October alone, a total of 211 unaccompanied minors were received by Kent County Council's children's services department, more than double the 97 children received in September. This brings the total for the year to 817.

The report states that this has resulted in knock-on pressure for wider children's services, affecting staff capacity to meet statutory requirements such as conducting visits, carrying out children and families assessments, and looked-after child reviews.

Speaking at a meeting held today to discuss the report, Kent County Council's assistant director of specialist children's services Sarah Hammond said the authority is currently in talks with some third sector providers "to see if they would be interested in providing a social work service".

She said discussions are focusing on services for the more than 200 young people who are placed outside of Kent that the authority retains statutory responsibility for.

"That would be very innovative and potentially the first time that commissioning out of children in care services for a proportion of children would have been done in the country," Hammond said.

"It is increasingly difficult to get social workers to work here in Kent. We have got increasing numbers of children placed outside of Kent. It makes sense to look at third sector organisations to provide that service for us."