Report shows staggering cost of looking after children in care in Conwy

The staggering cost of looking after children with complex needs has been revealed in an annual report to councillors.

The study, presented at Conwy county council’s social care and scrutiny committee this week, revealed it cost more than £4m to place 22 children in specialist residential placements or set them up with individual care packages between 2019-20.

This is the equivalent to around £186,000 a-year per child, more than four times what it would cost to send someone to top public school Eton, with fees of £42,501 per annum.

The comparison highlights how steep prices have become for care packages for some of our most vulnerable children, with prices more than doubling on average over the last four years, eating into dwindling budgets.

Residential establishments are situated out of the county and often many miles from families and familiar surroundings.

The children have complex physical and/or psychological impairments, often needing intensive therapies and care.

It is a problem the local authority is acutely aware of and is trying to change via a ground-breaking partnership with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and neighbouring Denbighshire council.

They are working on an assessment centre called Meadow Court, near Eirias Park in Colwyn Bay, which will have a full range of specialist staff ready to assess children aged between six and 17 years old.

It is something cabinet member for children and family social care Cllr Cheryl Carlisle believes in passionately.

She made an impassioned plea to scrutiny committee chair Cllr Chris Hughes for understanding of how important the new scheme was for local children.

She said: “These are our children with complex needs. They have been taken into care to help them with therapy.

“They may go from here to hospital, they may be self-harming, they may be suffering abuse – they may be smaller children.”

Psychiatrists and psychotherapists will be based with the team, with a maximum of six children being assessed in the unit at any one time.

Plans for the new unit, which will be registered with the Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), are due to be discussed by the council’s planning committee in the near future.

It will help the county target resources locally after placement costs shot up over the past few years.

According to the report, between 2016-17 to 2017-18 it cost £537,840 for five additional placements.

The same number in 2018-19 incurred a cost of £1,846,614 in total, meaning between 2016 and 2019 average costs of placements more than doubled to £7,000 per week.

While grants and special payments from the health board meant Conwy actually paid out £2.81m of the £4.09m it cost in 2019-20, it still left that portion of the social care budget around £1.29m in the red.

Bringing things closer home will be good for the council’s ever-shrinking purse and, more importantly, the children, says Cllr Carlisle.

Aside from value for money the centre will realise a personal ambition for her with regard to caring for children with complex needs.

She added: “It’s a pioneering idea with ourselves, Betsi and Denbighshire.

“This is why I took this portfolio on three years ago – it’s just the right thing to do for these children.”

By Jez Hemming – Local Democracy Reporter