Should Councils be Doing More to Help With Planning Applications for New Children's Homes?

We are always being told about the need for more placements for children who need specialist care in regulated childrens homes and how these beds are simply not available. This is a national issue and one that needs some considered joined up thinking.

Local authorities have neither the resources or in most cases, the inclination to significantly invest in their own provisions (Oxfordshire being one of the few exceptions) leaving he private sector to meet the shortfall.

Due to the complexity of the children being referred, children withbthe highest level of need are being left without suitable placements with the only alternatives being thise in the private sector with neither the expereince or resources to keep them safe, those companies who force councils to pay well over the odds to care for them or even worse, leave them to the lottery of illegal unregulated placements.

So what is the solution?

It isn't an easy one but maybe the local authorities that need to place children in their area could help push planning applications through. We have been approached by a number of companies who are trying to get planning to build new homes asking us to support them with their applications. In some cases, the same local authority that requires placements also had control over planning! Surely these has to be a way of expediating and streamlining the process?