Children’s services
- Safely reduce the number of children in care and families needing support, saving £2.898million over three years. We would support families earlier so children can remain safely at home and for those who can’t live with their birth-family, find a permanent alternative without unnecessary delay. Increasing foster care would save on expensive private care placements and improve the standard of support.
- Improve children's centre services, saving £180,000 over three years. We would focus on areas with most need. We ran a separate, detailed consultation on this proposal that closed on Tuesday 10 January 2017.
What people said when we asked about this between 3 November and 15 December 2016
People said:
Of six original options, respondents most strongly agreed with an option to safely reduce the number of children needing support with sixty-three percent agreeing. Just under half commented that children's services were a key area to protect. Eleven percent said efficiency savings should be considered but a substantial minority qualified this with the need to protect services and consider safety. Eighty percent said these options would have a negative impact on them, with just seven percent seeing a positive impact.
We said:
We will re-invest savings in children's services into services for children in care. Following consultation we will not go ahead with proposals to:
- reduce the value of the contract for health visiting saving another £500k
- reduce services for very young children saving £500k
- change youth and play services saving £800k
- change short breaks for children saving £100k.
Consultation on our proposed budget closed on 10 February 2017. We listened hard and considered all responses before finally setting our budget at our council meeting on 3 March.
Thanks to the thousands who joined the conversation.