Soaring costs of children at risk in Herefordshire

AROUND 150 children are now subject to social care protection plans in the county – a big rise on figures for the same time last year.

Herefordshire Council says its children’s services directorate faces “significant pressures” over the safeguarding of at risk youngsters, with the directorate itself seeing only essential posts being filled over the coming financial year.

Papers prepared for the council’s children’s services scrutiny committee show that the slashing of the directorate’s 2009- 2010 overspend from an expected £772,000 to £137,000 has done little to ease the pressures.

A draft budget for 2010- 2011 already allocates additional funding for the likes of court costs and caring for homeless teenagers.

The increasing cost of frontline safeguarding is to be covered by a central funding provision and will be subject to close management over the coming financial year.

An expected overspend of £889,000 on safeguarding alone was largely offset by savings made within the directorate’s planning, performance and development.

As of the end of March there were 147 children on protection plans, compared to 104 at the same time last year.

But the number of children actually in council care fell from 167 to 155 over the same period.

Referrals to the Stay Safe programme – which deals with a range of child safeguarding issues – topped 273 per 10,000 of the county’s under-18 population compared to 276 for 2008-2009.