Cheshire East's children's department admitted at the latest Children's Committee, that they don’t have enough money to fund the improvement plan that they submitted to the Department of Education in July, to bring its services up to standard – and doesn't know where the money is going to come from.
Cheshire East’s Children & Families services received an “Inadequate” rating from Ofsted earlier this year for its Care Leavers services with ratings of “Requires Improvement” in all other areas of provision.
The full council agreed the improvement plan put forward by officers at its meeting in July. The Improvement budget of £2m was robustly questioned at that time, by Conservative Opposition Group Leader, Cllr Janet Clowes who specifically asked:
“…why, when these papers state that the the Children’s Care Sector advises a budget of £5m to £15 million is needed to reverse an Inadequate rating, has the Council only allocated £2m for this purpose?”
Neither Cllr Clowes nor Cllr Jos Saunders (Conservative Opposition Spokesperson for Children’s Services) received adequate assurances at that time that the allocated budget would be sufficient.
Unfortunately, at September’s meeting of the children and families committee it became apparent that some of the £2m earmarked for the plan had had to be diverted to other areas.
Cllr Clowes explained that her colleague Cllr Jos Saunders, had previously identified that some of that £2m budget was only available because it had not been spent on care placements.
She said: "However we notice in this set of payments today that those care placement costs have risen again. "Can you please tell us how that will impact on the monies that are now available?"
Senior Officers (standing in at the meeting because Cheshire East currently does not have an executive director of children's services) explained:
"We recognise that there is a financial gap in terms of what we were expecting to spend versus what we are now spending”.
"We don't have an answer to that problem yet – that will need to be a council-wide solution, given the priority for improvement in children's services and given the extent of investment we are going to have to make." "But at this moment in time, we don't have an answer as to where the money will come from to fund that."
Bearing in mind that Conservative councillors have continually questioned whether the allocated £2m – when children's services did have the money – was going to be enough, this is a shocking admission as it can only further delay the speed at which these essential services can be delivered and so benefit our most vulnerable children.
