SOCIAL CARE
According to the latest statistics from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), 2009/10 saw a 35.9 per cent increase in care applications compared with the previous year.
In August, a survey by the Fostering Network found that out of 61 local authorities, 82 per cent had seen a rise in the number of children needing foster homes in 2009/10 and 58 per cent have found it more difficult to find appropriate homes for children.
Recruitment of social workers also remains a problem, with vacancy rates in some areas remaining stubbornly high.
Hilton Dawson, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, has written to every local authority in England asking what each of them is doing to protect frontline social work services from cuts. "We are unimpressed with the reports we are getting of local authorities freezing posts and cutting things like car allowance for child protection workers," he says. "A crisis situation is being made even worse by local authorities' decision making even before the CSR."
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