We need national action on 'obscene' social care costs says council boss, with one case costing £19k a week
The cost of social care to councils is becoming “obscene” and needs government intervention, says North Tyneside Council boss.
One care case alone is costing the local authority £19,000 a week. Both adult and children’s social care services at North Tyneside Council are seeing overspends of around £4.2m as the costs of care continue to spiral.
According to the council’s financial reports the average weekly cost to house a child in a non-council facility has risen from £5,945 last financial year to £7,702 now. The cost to the council to house children within a local authority-ran facility still stands at over £4,000 a week.
Currently there are 386 children for which the council is responsible, 44 of which are housed in external facilities. The council’s adult social care also continues to see a high demand for services, despite the use of short term residential care placements.
However, care costs can under certain circumstances reach into double figures, a situation branded “unsustainable” by North Tyneside’s deputy mayor. Deputy Mayor Carl Johnson said: “We need national action from the government urgently and we advocate for that and will continue to do so, as a region and a political party.
The deputy mayor continued: “The levels of care costs now are getting obscene. One case in the last couple months we had the costs jump from £9,000 to £18,000 a week. That is not sustainable for any organisation or business and every council in the country is facing this. Change needs to happen on a national level.”
According to a 10-year study from the Local Government Association, 65% of council budgets across the country are now devoted to adult and children’s social care. A rise of 57% back in 2014, however some councils are now seeing a total of 76% of their whole multi-million pound budgets spent purely on social care.