Chiefs have agreed to invest nearly £15 million more into children's care in Oldham which will see more social workers recruited and higher fostering payments.
The borough's cabinet has signed off on plans to massively increase the authority’s funding of services for vulnerable children and families in order to tackle a ‘crisis’ in the sector.
The extra £14.7m will be used to recruit 50 more permanent social workers with the aim of ensuring ‘manageable’ case-loads and reducing the need for expensive agency staff.
And payments to foster carers in Oldham would be increased by ten per cent, adding around £2,000 more a year in allowances. Around 250 children are currently fostered in the borough.
The investment boost will also see the establishment of a new council-run children’s home for local children and young people with learning disabilities so fewer children need to be cared for outside of Oldham.
At a recent full council meeting Oldham Foster Carer’s Working Group had pleaded with leaders for more support as they said the cost of living crisis was forcing kids to miss out on activities and carers to go ‘out of pocket’.
Leaders say the substantial cash boost will be an ‘invest to save’ policy, as agency costs and children having to be placed in expensive private care homes, often out of the borough, are piling financial pressure on the authority.
The use of external care placements – either agency foster care or commissioned placements in children’s homes – has risen by almost 200 per cent, according to the cabinet report.
“Together the impact of additional demand, increasing reliance on agency workers and rising costs of both staff and placements is currently creating additional cost pressures of over 25 per cent on total children’s services budget,” officers state.
Cabinet member for children and young people, Councillor Eddie Moores said: “We must recognise the challenges of increased demand and a national shortage of social workers that is facing the children’s care service.
“That is why the investment into children’s services is absolutely vital if we are to maintain our commitment to focus on our children and young people.
“This is a local response to a national crisis.”
As part of the investment the starting salaries of new social workers will be increased, and a loyalty payment of £2k introduced for social workers who work in Oldham for at least the next two years.
Alongside the recruitment of new social workers, chiefs are to recruit 17 more social care support workers to take on the administrative side of the service, freeing up more time to be spent with children and families.
These administrative workers will be given opportunities to develop at the authority’s social work academy scheme which was established in October.
And £3m of external funding will be used to provide a greater range of services, support and activities at key children’s centres, with a further £2.7m of external funding to be used to target support for families currently struggling and needing ‘less intensive’ support.
Other measures will see an increase in the teams dealing with fostering and special guardianship orders and the amount of move-on accommodation available in Oldham to support those young people ready to leave care to live independently.
A scheme will be created to provide deposits and first month’s rent as well as the council acting as guarantors for young people ready to move into independent accommodation and housing.
Five special foster carers will also be recruited to offer additional training, support and advice to foster carers across the borough.
Council leader Amanda Chadderton told the cabinet meeting: “I want to lead a council and a town that puts children and young people at the heart of everything that we do.
“We talk about making Oldham the best place to be a social worker, we will be reviewing the pay and conditions to ensure that our social workers are paid what they should be for the outstanding work that they do.
“This is a significant amount of money and we are the forefront in terms of investment in children’s social care.
“We can do what we can do, and we are doing an awful lot to address some of these problems but now we really need the government to do their bit to stop private companies profiteering from this crisis.”
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