Councils ‘failing to navigate’ children’s social care market, research shows

A report by What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC), which will feed into the upcoming review of children’s social care in England, finds that “most local authorities are experiencing an increasing demand for children’s residential care accompanied with rising costs for these provisions”.

Despite this, 44 per cent of English local authorities do not have a publicly available or up-to-date sufficiency strategy, according to the report.

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Responding to the findings, Josh MacAlister, chair of the Care Review, said the lack of sufficiency planning means children are more likely to be “moved around the country, unable to stay at their school, remain in touch with their brothers or sisters or build new relationships that will last”.

The biggest sufficiency challenges faced by local authorities include a lack of foster carers combined with an increase in numbers of children with severe trauma and acute therapeutic needs.

“The cohort of children and young people in care is becoming more complex and thus increasingly expensive to place within residential provisions,” the report states, highlighting that “several local authorities reported that even a small number of children who require high need placements severely impacted their budget”.

A lack of suitable placements for children with complex needs is pushing up costs for placements, the report finds, noting that even councils that are not struggling with sufficiency issues are unable to access placements due to them being used by children under the care of other local authorities.

“Each local authority is competing with other local authorities for a scarce number of children’s home places,” it adds.

The findings show that councils are struggling to “navigate the marketised system of residential care and to provide the quality of services which they strive to achieve”, according to the report's authors.

Researchers find that “some local authorities” have put systems in place to improve forecasting and boost availability of placements when they are needed, however, very little evidence is available to establish the impact of such resources.

A combination of improved forecasting of the needs of children entering care and resources to analyse this data, along with plans to measure the success of such systems, is needed to “alleviate these challenges through market shaping and commissioning”.

MacAlister said that the report shows that “on top of dealing with budget cuts, too many local authorities are failing to navigate and shape the marketised system of care for children”. 

An investigation into the children’s social care market by the Competition and Markets Authority is due to be published this week.

“The review will be making detailed recommendations to address this when we report in the spring, and we look forward to hearing soon from the Competitions and Markets Authority on this issue,” MacAlister added.