Children's services and adult social care behind £1.5million overspend for Central Bedfordshire Council

Its most expensive child residential placement costs Central Bedfordshire Council £780,000 a year, a meeting heard.

The local authority faces a £1.5m revenue budget overspend at the end of quarter two for 2024/25, CBC’s corporate resources overview and scrutiny committee was told.

“It’s not about totals for children’s care because the numbers of young people in residential placements is really quite small, currently 26,” explained CBC chief executive Marcel Coiffait.

“The difference with children is you don’t know which are going to come through your door and how complex are their needs. The most expensive child currently costs us £780,000 a year for a residential placement.

“Last year, the most expensive was much less. The average annual cost is about £330,000 per child. A different child appearing could skew that whole average enormously. A neighbouring council has one child costing £40,000 a week, probably £2m annually.

“Every year, the average number of additional people in old people’s care homes has risen by roughly 16 more packages. In the past 12 months, 101 people were eligible for adult social care in such a setting.

“Then consider what’s happened to prices in that period, so it’s about £1,000 per week per person. Overall that’s an extra £5m on the original 16 forecast. That’s why we’re overspending.”

A Central Bedfordshire child whose condition deteriorates with age can become eligible for the council to provide care, he warned. “We could be that council offering a £40,000 a week care package tomorrow.

“So predicting trends trends in these areas is really difficult and it’s quite volatile. That’s why our costs of children in residential placements have shot up because we’ve more complex children than this time last year.

“In adult social care, it’s because there’s been a real shift in demand. It’s not a Central Bedfordshire problem, but a national one. We’ve a much higher number of people who’ve exhausted their own resources, so they were paying for their own care. That’s a factor of the cost of living.

“And because people have waited longer for NHS treatment than they might in the past, after the pandemic, you’re two years frailer and less able to recover and you might be eligible for social care.

“During Covid and its aftermath, people were genuinely afraid to put their relatives in care homes. That fear has disappeared. Those three reasons are behind that level of demand shift.

“I can’t tell you whether that rapid rise is a continuous upward trend or could flatten out at a new level and increase slowly again. The numbers you’ll see in the medium-term financial plan (MTFP) setting process are very challenging, the most challenging I’ve seen in a local authority.

“This isn’t a criticism of adult social care,” he added. “Our average costs are way below the national averages. We manage demand well. Every one of the neighbouring authorities is overspending this year.

“We’ve the lowest rate. It’s not about things we should have done and haven’t. We’ve no option but to manage within the funding we’ve got, even though the demand level currently means we’re outside that and something else has to give.”