The cost of care in monetary terms anyway
Why do Children's Services not support families in need instead of pushing them through the care system?"It costs too much" to provide support is the old chestnut trotted out time again. So I thought I would have a dig around and see how much it actually costs to keep a child in care.
D. Cost of service provision
In the 2013/14 financial year an estimated £2.5 billion (gross expenditure) was spent on the main looked after children’s services in England. The majority of expenditure (55%) was on foster care services (around £1.4 billion, 55%) and children’s homes (around £0.9 billion, 36%). Table 4 shows the gross expenditure on the main looked after children’s services since 2000/01. Both the total expenditure and the cost per looked after child increased year- on-year until 2011/12. The changes in 2012/13 and 2013/14 should not be deemed conclusive since these figures are still provisional estimates.
Source Children in Care in England Statistics:2014
What it actually means
The 2013/14 estimate was that 905 millions would be spent on children's homes,1,377.3 millions on fostering services and 205.4 millions on other children looked after services.The estimated average cost per looked after child was £36,524
Now I may be naive but even if each family had say 15 hours support a week at a cost of £8.40 per hour plus of course administration costs so perhaps round it up to £10 per hour. Lets throw in some family therapy once a week at about £90 per session. So total cost £240 per week =£12480 a year.
I am aware that other families may have other needs that could be more complicated and therefore more expensive. However most families have more than one child taken into care so it could easily be not £36,524 per year but £73048 for two children and so on.
When the child leaves the "care" system is not the end of the story either they are far more likely to have mental health problems, an offending history...
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