Raising children is the greatest investment in the future anyone can make – not just for themselves, but for the country. It’s time we had a government that recognised that.
How astonishing it is that so many children are being denied the permanent secure loving home that adoption could provide and instead we spend these huge sums to put them at risk of the most horrendous abuse.
All the state interventions in the world, debates about safeguarding young people, youth clubs, and so on will not make a serious enough impact if we keep ignoring the home environments our young people are growing up in.
Society is happier to spend £130,000 per child per year on Young Offenders Institutions as a punishment, even though it doesn’t work, than a fraction of that cost on constructive intervention.
Local councils and communities know our areas better than central government can. We know what’s needed, what works and what doesn’t.
There is a consistent and extreme bias against adoption. Children are being denied the chance of a loving home.
The annual costs of these placements is huge. The system is out of control.
Usually the annual costs of placements at children’s homes owned by local authorities are higher than independent ones. Why should children in mainstream schools should be placed in institutional residential care rather than with foster carers, or better still adoption?
Bradford Council reports that its average current cost per child residential placement, is at the time of writing £6,498 per week, £337,896 per year, which dwarfs the £4,258 per month, £51,100 per year cost of housing adult immigrants in hotels.
Building on the momentum created by existing policy, and learning lessons from overseas, can deliver a significant boost to British family policy – without breaking the bank.
Often children in mainstream education are deemed to require highly expensive institutional care. Leicestershire spent £732,502 for just one such child last year. Barnet £716,318, Doncaster £677,857, Hampshire £671,594 and Cornwall £629,200.
The highest daily cost of home-to-school transport for any individual pupil was £969 a day for Camden. Lincolnshire £650. Redbridge £630. Gloucestershire £603.92. East Sussex £577.40. Brighton and Hove £500. Dorset £481.65. Buckinghamshire £480.
The problem for the Council is not that it is taxing too little. It is not that is has been unfairly treated. The difficulty is that it is spending too much.
The educational benefits are well established. But progress will be derisory until the social worker veto is removed.
Scotland made “The Promise” to our care-experienced children and young people. They deserve more than legislative headlines. They deserve real services, delivered on the ground, backed by funding and accountability.