'Profiteering' agencies charge Leeds council around £250,000 to foster a single child for a year

The local authority budgeted £18m to look after 74 vulnerable youngsters this financial year, according to council documents. It has prompted senior leaders to call for the Government to crack down on “profiteering” in the sector.

In Leeds, foster carers employed by the council were given their biggest pay rise in eight years recently, in part to stave off competition from private providers who typically offer more cash. Fostering agencies are used by councils when they often do not have enough carers themselves. With more children having been taken into care across the UK over the last decade, such agencies are being relied on more heavily, at the expense of the public purse.

Speaking at a children and young people scrutiny committee this week, Labour councillor Jordan Bowden said: “I just want to make a point about how disgraceful it is that there is a market here and we do appear to be overcharged for the protection of vulnerable children. The breakdown of the cost works out at around £240,000 per child.”

In response, Coun Fiona Venner, the council’s executive member for children and families, said: “There needs to be national leadership around this issue – around the profiteering. You’re right, £250,000 a year per child is not an unusual figure to be quoted for an external residential placement.”

Coun Venner said a similar two-tier system was affecting social work, with council having to rely on agency staff because of a shortage among their own workforces. In West Yorkshire, local authorities are now co-operating more in a bid to avoid competing against each other for workers.

She added: “You’ve got this national issue where authorities are outbidding each other and it drives the cost up and up and up. Agency staff going into social work are young and at the start of their career. In a cost-of-living crisis, you can totally understand they’re going where the money is. But you’re not getting the same continued personal development or the same peer support you would get if you were part of a permanent social work team in a council.

“There is a real issue around the profiteering that’s happening in agency work and [child placements] and areas are trying to gain control over that, but it’s a national problem.”