CABINET member for children’s service Cllr Andrew Parry has defended a decision by the former council to shut children’s homes in Dorset.

He says that the move was the right one at the time although it has been criticised for resulting in an increase in the number of children being looked after outside the county.

Cllr Parry says the decision last year to close West End House at Cattistock and Maumbury House in Dorchester were taken in the light of poor Ofsted findings and internal reports which saw little hope of improvement in care at either setting.

The overall Dorset Council children’s services budget for the end of the financial year is now expected to be 13.2 per cent, or £8.6million, over the target figures, most of that made up of the cost of external placements. Opposition councillors claim the ‘overspend’ is largely down to the Conservative Cabinet setting the budget at too low a level to begin with. It is now likely that funding will have to be taken out of the council’s £28.5million reserve fund to balance the books.

More than half of the county’s 469 children in its care are with external providers, many of them adolescence who are difficult to place with foster carers.

Cllr Parry says that many in care children living outside Dorset are with other family members, often aunts and uncles, or grandparents.

He said that a couple of properties in Weymouth were currently being looked at to see if they could be used for what the council is now calling a ‘children’s hub’. Cllr Parry said the centre aimed to be “a settling, environment and homely.”

He said that in 2016 the former council had in excess of 500 children in care, when Dorset Council was created in April this year it was 446, which could be counted as 417, excluding Christchurch children, but that had now risen again to 469.

He said there was speculation about why that had happened but the important thing was that each child was in an appropriate setting and receiving appropriate care. He said using in-house foster carers cost £500 a week, using independent (private) foster carers cost £1,000 per week with specialist residential care generally at £2,800 to £8,000 per week, sometimes even more.

Cllr Parry said Dorset had seen an increase in the number of adolescent children, who were highly vulnerable with more complex needs and often at a risk to themselves or others, which needed specialist care.

He said nationally there were 75,000 children in care with predictions that it would continue to rise. “Our challenge is whether we can break that national trend,” he said.

Hopes of that now rest on a reorganisation of Dorset’s social services teams with an emphasis on locality-based services, earlier intervention and support, once again recruiting youth workers and improving work with partners. That is due to begin in the New Year but has already led to opposition to some aspects from social workers. Current executive director for children’s services, Sarah Parker, will have left her post by the time the reorganisation begins.

Chair of the council’s audit and governance committee, Matthew Hall, said on Tuesday: “What price do we put on children’s care and safety? I don’t think we should…we mustn’t try and fit the service to a budget…demand will almost always outstrip any savings.”

He said the council needed to set a realistic social services budget in the coming financial year based on “true needs and not wishful thinking and hopes.”