A LOCAL authority has set out its plan to reduce the number of children in care in County Durham and improve its current offer of sufficient accommodation.
Next week, Durham County Council’s Cabinet will be asked to agree the authority’s Sufficiency Statement, which sets out a strategic approach to securing enough accommodation to meet the needs of children in care in County Durham. Cabinet will hear that, over the past five years, the number of children in care in County Durham has risen from 92 per 10,000 in 2020 to 122 per 10,000 in 2024. There is also now a higher rate of children entering care.
This increase has put pressure on the council’s budget, with £30 million being spent on children in care placements in 2020, with this figure increasing to £88 million in 2024.
The council has identified four key aims to address this which have been outlined in the Sufficiency Statement. These are:
- Support for children and young people to live outside of care – Further investment in the council’s preventative offer to provide targeted support. This will ensure more children and young people continue to live at home with their family and reduce the number of children entering care.
- Family based homes – Grow the council’s in-house fostering offer, so it can care for more children and young people; provide more support to foster carers to prevent children’s living arrangements breaking down; and support more children to leave care when the time is right for them.
- Sufficiency for children’s homes – The development of new specialist in-house children’s homes to meet a range of needs and enable the council to care for more children closer to home.
- Market management opportunities and broader work with the region – Review the cost of care to provide sustainable pricing across the council’s children’s social care markets. Develop a regional Sufficiency Statement and work closely with providers to influence and shape new care provision based on local sufficiency needs.
Cllr Cathy Hunt, Durham County Council’s Cabinet member for children and young people’s services, said: “We are committed to ensuring we have a range of good quality, local care provision that meets the varying needs of our children in care and care leavers.
“The Sufficiency Statement sets out our current position in being able to meet these needs and outlines actions to support further improvement. This includes new actions to help reduce the number of children in care and to support children to remain at home where is it safe to do so, while addressing increasing expenditure.”
Cabinet will also be asked to agree proposals to move from the term ‘Corporate Parent’ to ‘Durham Family’.
The term ‘corporate parent’ means the collective responsibility of the council, elected members, employees and partner agencies in providing the best possible care and safeguarding for children and young people in care and care leavers. The council received feedback from its children and young people that they do not identify with the term corporate parenting and would prefer the term Durham Family to be used.
Cabinet will, therefore, be asked to agree for the term Durham Family to be used and, as such, the Corporate Parenting Strategy will be known as the Durham Family Strategy.
Cllr Hunt added: “As the Durham Family, when it is not possible to stay at home with parents, we will provide care for children and young people and will become their co-parent. We see this as taking responsibility for children, so they feel loved, cared for and safe where they live. It is also about making sure our children and young people have the best opportunities, feel valued, are excited about their future and know they will be supported to achieve this.
“Listening to our children and young people about what they need and ensuring their views help to shape the services they receive is central to our practice.”
The council has worked with its young people to create a friendly animation to explain what the Durham Family Strategy is and what its key priorities are. The animation has been storyboarded with children and young people, who have also recorded voiceovers for the video, and can be viewed at The Durham Family.
Cabinet will meet at 9.30am on Wednesday 15 October.
