THE number of Dorset children being looked after by external providers has increased again – despite attempts to keep the figures down.

Dorset Council had 444 children in its care at the end of September, up by 31 since the start of the financial year: of those 163 children are living with more expensive external providers.

A report this week says that the decisions to use external providers, many of them out of the county, is expected to lead to an overspend of the external placements budget by £7.2m at the end of the financial year.

Opposition councillors have previously questioned whether the budget was set at a realistic level to begin with by the Conservative-controlled council. The overall children’s services budget for the end of the financial year is now predicted to be 13.2 per cent, or £8.6million, over target figures at the end of the financial year.

Dorset Council say that estimating the number of children likely to need care has always been difficult to estimate correctly and fluctuates throughout the year.

The latest figures include an extra 13 children with external providers and an increase of 11 in residential care placements at the end of September.

Those in specialist residential care are mainly adolescents who are described as ‘highly vulnerable’ and may present a danger to themselves or others. Costs of their care range from £2,800 to £8,000 a week for each individual.

At the same time the county has fewer children with its own foster carers than it anticipated - 198 in total, resulting in an underspend on that budget of almost £1m.

The DC foster care service is currently being considered for outsourcing although only a quarter of similar bench-marked councils have followed that route.

While in-house foster placements are down those in independent (private) fostering are 10 per cent more than maximum budgeted for with the council paying for 90 Dorset children at a forecast cost of almost £5m for the full financial year, £1.2million over budget. The total is more than for the total for the in-house team which looks after double the number of children for less cost - 198 children at £4.16m.

Executive director for children’s services, Sarah Parker, is hoping that the department’s Blueprint for Change exercise, which is now almost at the end of the consultation period, will result in fewer children coming into the care of the council in the future and should result in savings of around £1million each year. The department said recently that it will also save £300,000 by setting up a new call centre, as part of the reorganisation.

Final decisions on the new structure are likely to be made in the New Year when some social workers and other staff may have to consider what jobs they might like to apply for. The exercise itself is not expected to result in a reduction of staff and the department is currently advertising for a range of vacant posts across the county.