Maria Eagle, who is responsible for looked-after children as part of herportfolio, said spending had increased by nearly 30 per cent during thepast three years, while the number of children in residential care hadremained roughly static.
"As far as I and my officials can see, this huge increase in investmentdoesn't appear to have significantly increased the levels of outcomes.And that is a worry, something we should all be concerned about."
Speaking at Children Now's conference on residential care last week,Eagle added: "We must have proper value for money. I don't just mean Imust have proper value for money, although I must, but I meancommissioning services must."
Initiatives such as the proposed national contract for residential careand regional commissioning partnerships were a step in the rightdirection, she said.
"But it is clear there is further scope for improvement on the part oflocal authorities to ensure the use of high-cost placements can be fullyjustified. Because it appears that, too often, local authorities aredependent on spot purchasing of placements in response to crises andthat cannot be a way of guaranteeing best value for money.
"Of course, resources are then soaked up in high-cost, oftenout-of-authority, placements that don't necessarily correlate withhigh-quality outcomes."
And she added that better commissioning was not "rocket science".
Eagle was also critical of the quality of children's homes. She said shewas concerned that only 74 per cent of children's homes met all nationalminimum standards in 2004/05 and that only a quarter meet more than 90per cent of these standards.
"Overall performance is still very variable. It varies geographically,across sectors and across the five outcomes. So I don't see inherentlythat there is good reason for this variability to continue for muchlonger. We want to see it diminish. We want all homes to meet and aspireto exceed national minimum standards and the sooner the better."
Eagle agreed there was scope for making the education of looked-afterchildren a greater priority in school inspections. And while she gave notimetable for the forthcoming green paper on looked-after children, shesaid: "I hope the package of measures will be the beginning of a neweffort to transform the outcomes of these young people."
She revealed that in-depth statistical analysis would inform theproposals.
This has already shown that looked-after children attend the poorestschools.
"There are far too few looked-after children in the better schools andfar too many in the poorer schools."
