Number of children in care falls in Shropshire Council area

There are currently 299 children in care in the Shropshire Council area, a fall from 313 in March 2015.

For the first time more children are leaving care in Shropshire than entering it. This year (2015/16) to date 75 children have left Shropshire Council’s care system, and 64 new children have been received into care.

A Parliamentary Debate took place last week to consider the increasing number of children coming into the care system nationally, the impact on those children and their families, and what the Government can do to help ensure that children stay safely at home with their families.

Shropshire Council’s approach is to support children to stay at home with their families wherever possible, rather than take them into care, and the success of this work is reflected in these figures.

Tina Russell, head of safeguarding with Shropshire Council, said:

“There’ll always be a need for some children to go into care to safeguard them and we’ll do this where necessary. But having undertaken a three-year analysis over 2011–2014 of the children who came into our care, we were able to identify a significant proportion of children who, having spent a period of time in care,then left to return home to their family. We challenged ourselves to ask if something different could have been done to prevent the need for a child to come into care.

“Our Early Help and Edge of Care work has been to develop a range of services to support children to stay at home with their families where we can, and we have invested in services including Havenbrook residential short breaks and outreach to prevent children going into care and to ensure they return home safely.

“For many children coming into care it’s at the request of a parent who feels they aren’t coping and have no alternative but to ask that someone else cares for them. In these cases it’s about challenging and supporting the parent to help them to fulfil their parental responsibilities.

“There will also be cases where we get a recommendation that a child should go into care because of risks that are occurring in the family. In these cases we have a number of multi-agency processes that we work to, and these always engage the parents and the young person so that we can hear their views about any concerns that other professionals have – and discuss what we can do to address those concerns.”

Whilst Shropshire Council works hard to provide support to families and children and prevent children going into care, it is asking for help to do so.

David Minnery, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for children and young people, said:

“Our social workers really are making a positive difference to the lives of families and children and supporting families is something we do really well, but something we’re not able to do enough.

“We’re therefore asking people who have experienced the challenges and rewards of parenting and raising children to think if they can offer support and mentoring to other families during difficult times. If so, we ask them to come forward so that we can support and train them to provide to support other families.

“We’re also seeking families who can provide short breaks in a family environment to, for example, teenagers or children with behavioural or learning difficulties, to prevent them coming into care.”