Their claims follow remarks made by Lord Filkin to Children Now questioning whether local authorities were fulfilling their statutory duties. "You don't need to be too suspicious to suspect that when a child is 70 miles away, the likelihood of councils fulfilling their visiting obligations is much less than if the child lives half-a-mile down the road," he said.
"My back-of-an-envelop calculation would be that if a child is placed with foster parents or in a children's home for a year, a social worker should visit them nine times for the first year."
But John Coughlan, chair of the Association of Directors of Social Services' children and families committee, said he didn't know of any evidence suggesting children were not being properly supervised.
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