Council explores ways to keep kids out of care as Derbyshire sees 12 per cent rise in two years

The latest available figures from Derbyshire County Council show the number of children taken into care increased from 802 in 2018/19 to 899 in 2019/20.

Speaking in an improvement and scrutiny committee meeting this week, the newly appointed executive director of children’s services Carol Cammiss said this increase was representative of a national trend.

Councillor Christine Dale asked: “We’ve got a large number of children going into care.

“It seems to be growing, what are we going to do about prevention and intervention?

“Because it’s very costly isn’t it?

“Trying to find foster carers.

“It seems to be quite a serious problem at the moment.”

Mrs Cammiss responded: “Two to three years ago we were sitting around the 750 mark, now we’ve got 900 children.

“We’re doing a lot of work in the prevention space around trying to prevent children from entering the system, however we’ve always got to bear in mind that there are some children that experience such risk and such harm that it’s absolutely appropriate to take them into care.

“It’s making the distinction between what can we do with families that we think need some ground work or some intensive work that would get them over that traumatic experience or that complex pyramid?”

Mrs Cammiss, who has carried out a review of children’s services with a view to improving them, said that at the moment foster carers didn’t get much support from the council, but that was something she wanted to change.

“So where foster carer placements potentially are at risk of breaking down to strengthen foster carers – help foster carers, support foster carers,” she said.

Councillor Sue Burfoot commented: “Certainly some of the most challenging children will be in foster care and these people are having to deal with difficult situations and they put themselves forward to be foster carers.”

As of the latest available figures in March 2021, the council employed 311 foster carers, with many more being employed by external agencies.

The authority has a rolling recruitment process for foster carers, visit the derbyshire.gov.uk for more information.