£600k boost for 'inadequate' Lancashire fostering services

1:20pm Sunday 11th May 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

A CASH injection of around £600,000 has been provided to turn around Lancashire County Council's inadequate' fostering service.

Last November the council's services for vulnerable youngsters were the subject of a damning report by Ofsted.

County Hall officials were criticised for not ensuring criminal records checks were carried out on people living with looked-after children.

And other failings, such as managers' lack of knowledge of regulations and current best practice, and too many foster placements not being suitable for youngsters' needs, also came under fire.

Further concerns were expressed about foster children having to share bedrooms with older children who were not their brothers or sisters.

The service, which is overseen by Burnley West county councillor Marcus Johnstone, has now drawn up a series of proposals designed to address the shortcomings.

An extra two independent reviewing officers - who monitor county council placements - will join the existing eight overseeing looked-after children in East Lancashire - at a cost of £86,000.

This should reduce the caseload for each indidvidual officer from 165, as it currently stands, to 32.And more in-house assessments of cases, costing £45,000, to ensure standards are maintained, will be employed.

Currently the fostering service, partially as a result of the fostering inspection, faces an overspend of £3.3million.

In order to address this £350,000 has been set aside to reduce the amount of agency cover used by the service. External help will be also sought to clear a backlog of outstanding assessments for would-be foster carers.

An independent chairman has been recommended for the fostering department, in a bid to ensure consistency and impartiality, which will set the service back £60,000, along with a £32,000 quality assurance officer's post.

The blueprints are the result of a county council cabinet working party and are set to be agreed by Coun Johnstone.

County councillor Marcus Johnstone, cabinet member for children and young people, said: "This is a measure of how seriously we take our responsibility to put right those areas that were highlighted by the inspection.

"With this money, we intend to take on new staff to speed up foster carer assessments and increase the number of independent reviewing officers.

"We also want to reduce our reliance on privately-run fostering agencies which charge comparatively high fees to find placements for looked after children.

"Instead we plan to increase the numbers of our own foster carers. This means children are more likely to stay in their own area and represents enormously better value for taxpayers' money."