Gateshead Council approved an updated strategy to reduce the number of children and young people in its care.
According to council figures, in January of this year there were 465 children and young people in need of care outside their family homes. This represents an increase of more than 10% from the same period of 2020.
A report delivered to Gateshead Council said: “We know that Covid 19 has impacted the accessibility to services and increased isolation for families and we have observed an increase of families requiring social care intervention with complex needs.”
Read More: Gateshead's poorest families have been hit hardest by the Covid crisis, says health boss
The council’s strategy document went on to say: “We will only achieve our vision of reducing the number of children who need to be looked after through a shared understanding across all council services and our partners to work together and provide families services for children in need of our help and support”.
The strategy aims to enable all children, young people and adults to "maximise their capabilities" maintain control in their lives, create conditions for fair employment, and foster supportive communities. As opposed to care being the first option, placing children in the care of extended family or family friends will be explored more.
The council plans to, where it is safe, keep families together and decisions to take a child into care will be informed by a "detailed, proportional, and professionally justifiable assessment." The strategy also prioritises keeping looked after children in education, using familiar placements, promoting family contact when safe, and sustainable life plans.
Coun Catherine Donovan spoke up to connect how financial pressures experienced by many may exacerbate the need for social intervention. Coun Donovan said: “I just think it needs to be said that none of this is happening in a bubble.
“The previous report about energy rebates and how people manage is directly impacted by services like this. Imagine a situation where a family who is already under pressure financially, cannot afford to give their kids the food they need, because they have lost their Universal Credit uplift, now they are faced with these extra bills.
“More and more in our poorer areas we are hearing poorer people cannot afford to put their cooker on, so when we hit the winter kids come home from home from school and you can’t put the heating on and you cant’ put the cooker on, the pressure in that home is going to be total stress."
Leader of Gateshead council Martin Gannon said: “Tory MPs talk blithely about the need to invest upstream to stop spending down stream.
"We don’t do this, apart from the human consequences about lives destroyed, the evidence is there for children who grow up as Looked After children have much worse life outcomes, whether that’s suicide, health, the financial consequences of having to deal with that are absolutely astronomical.
“They talk blithely about investing upstream and the means they choose to do that by is by cutting support to local government by 60% to make it impossible to do the things that need to be done.”
