Children in Care: Per Capita Costs
(asked on 27th June 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much it costs to maintain a child in local authority care for a year.
The annual cost to maintain a child in local authority care in the period 2016 to 2017 was £178,360[1] for residential care and £29,900 for fostering services.
[1]The results are based on unit costs included in the Local Authority Interactive Tool (LAIT) Department for Education, GOV.UK. Last updated on 6 June 2018. Accessed from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait.
The figures in the LAIT are recorded as weekly. For the annual cost, the methodology simply involved multiplying the figures by 52 weeks.
Please note that the original LAIT figures were rounded to the nearest £5, so actual annual costs may vary slightly.
For the weekly fostering services that were originally included in the LAIT, the calculation was based on the section 251 Outturn data. This records the total spend (gross) on fostering services. This figure was then divided by the number of children in fostering placements as of 31 March 2017, which was published in the ‘Children Looked After in England data, SFR50’. This figure was then divided by 365 days to give a daily cost. It was then multiplied by seven to give the weekly cost.
For the calculation of weekly residential care, the LAIT also referred to the section 251 for total spend on residential care. This figure was then divided by the number of days that residential care was provided for children nationally, which is collected as part of the Children Looked after return. This figure was then multiplied by seven for the weekly cost.
Section 251 documents, Education Funding Agency and Education and Skills Funding Agency. Accessed from: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/section-251-materials.
‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2016 to 2017’, Department for Education. Accessed from:
‘Children Looked after return SSDA903’, Department for Education. Accessed from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-looked-after-return-2016-to-2017-guide.