In April social care leaders warned a proposed performance indicator on out-of-authority placements might create a perverse incentive to move children when it was not in their best interests (Children Now, 20-26 April).
Data on how far looked-after children are placed from home was collected for the first time in the year ending March 2005.
A spokesman for the DfES said: "In our experience placements close to home are better for the child." But Keith Gorman, business manager of By the Bridge, an independent fostering agency based in Kent, said the social care sector was "crying out for quantitative research".
Research by academics from Stockholm University in Sweden last year found that the risk of placement breakdown increased if a child was placed a short distance from the parental home.
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