Council's children's services to receive entire social care top-up
Gabriella Jozwiak
Monday, January 21, 2019
A council is proposing to plough all of its social care windfall from government into children's services in a bid to stem rising numbers of children in care.
Liverpool City Council wants to invest £7.7m in hiring an additional 160 social care staff.
The aim is to reduce caseloads, which were criticised by Ofsted, and improve its early help services over the next two years.
The decision, expected to be rubber-stamped at a council meeting this week, will pull in £5.1m of the local authority's "additional social care funding" for adults and children.
The government wrote to all local authorities in December with details of their share of a £410m top-up for 2019/20 announced in the October Budget.
The money is not ringfenced and councils can choose to improve their social care offer for older people and people with disabilities, as well as children.
Council documents show plans to spend all of this on additional recruitment, as well as topping up investment with the council's own resources.
Over the past decade, the number of children in care in the local authority area has increased by nearly a half (47 per cent) from 850 in 2009 to 1,250 in 2019.
These are currently managed by 313 full-time social care staff, which the council wants to increase by 160 people (51 per cent) to 473.
These will include 115 social workers, 18 senior social workers and 22 deputy team managers, some of whom will be allocated to the Family Support Service.
Liverpool's Children Looked After Sufficiency Strategy for 2019-2022 will see more investment in early help activities, to prevent children entering care in the first place.
Those already in care will receive better support through the council's aim to place children near to their families and friendship groups, and minimise placements beyond the local area.
Cabinet member for children's services Barry Kushner said Liverpool was the only council in England choosing to invest its money in this way.
"Our staff have been really stretched as the number of children they are responsible for has risen significantly, and we have been unable to match it with increased resources," he said.
"We know that if we are to continue to improve services for our most vulnerable young people, we simply must increase the amount of support we provide to staff and their families.
"This investment is crucial to delivering the quality of help and intensive support that our most vulnerable young people need, as well as retaining and recruiting the next generation of social work staff.
"Social work is a highly pressured job which can sometimes involve life-changing decisions for families, so we must give them the space and time to be able to do it to the best of their ability."
The decision followed an Ofsted inspection in May 2018 which judged the authority's children's services to "require improvement" in all areas.
The report stated: "Capacity across children's services has been, and continues to be, a critical issue.
"The late development of early help services means that the local authority has struggled to manage the level of demand for children's social care services.
"High caseloads have compromised the quality of social work practice."
Liverpool City Council's cabinet will debate the proposals on Friday (25 January).
