Children in residential care/ Foster Care
Case reference FOI2024/01181
Received 8 July 2024
Published 25 July 2024
Request
1. For the year 2023, how many children were in residential care?
2. For the current year (2024) how many children are in residential care?
3. Can you list the cost for each child’s residential care per week?
4. For the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, how much per month was paid to Meadows Care per child? Can this be broken down into standard monthly charges and a breakdown of additional charges, eg. waking nights.
5. For the year 2024, how much per week / month was paid to 3belle ami health? Can this be broken down into the standard charge and a breakdown of additional charges, eg. waking nights.
6. Can you state how much Herefordshire council spent during the last 10 years on EACH of the following, broken down by year:
1. Non-repayable grants to Foster Parents
a. towards the purchase of bigger cars; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
b. towards the building of house extensions or the purchase of bigger houses; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
2. If recipients later cease fostering, are grants repayable, in full or in part - or would they be if this situation hasn't yet arisen?
3. Non-repayable grants to Adoptive Parents
a. towards the purchase of bigger cars; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
b. towards the building of house extensions or the purchase of bigger houses; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
4. If after a grant has been received and adopted children are returned to Local Authority care or are removed, are grants repayable, in full or in part.
Response
1. For the year 2023, how many children were in residential care?
2. For the current year (2024) how many children are in residential care?
3. Can you list the cost for each child’s residential care per week?
4. For the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, how much per month was paid to Meadows Care per child? Can this be broken down into standard monthly charges and a breakdown of additional charges, eg. waking nights.
5. For the year 2024, how much per week / month was paid to 3belle ami health? Can this be broken down into the standard charge and a breakdown of additional charges, eg. waking nights.
6. Can you state how much Herefordshire council spent during the last 10 years on EACH of the following, broken down by year:
1. Non-repayable grants to Foster Parents
a. towards the purchase of bigger cars; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
b. towards the building of house extensions or the purchase of bigger houses; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
2. If recipients later cease fostering, are grants repayable, in full or in part - or would they be if this situation hasn't yet arisen?
3. Non-repayable grants to Adoptive Parents
a. towards the purchase of bigger cars; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
b. towards the building of house extensions or the purchase of bigger houses; if more than one family received a grant please elaborate.
4. If after a grant has been received and adopted children are returned to Local Authority care or are removed, are grants repayable, in full or in part.
This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Firstly, as per the GDPR data retention policy, information is only held for 7 years (6 plus the current financial year), so the full 10 years requested is not held. The Finance Department have advised that it is not possible to sort spend into the categories requested as they don’t have this level of detail on the transactions to be able to identify if this fits the criteria. An initial search has shown there are approximately 500-550 transactions would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 1 hour to check each one.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 500 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
The Service area have advised that we could answer the first and second question of your request within the limit, for the third question, we could provide total annual spend, highest, lowest and average cost. Please let me know if this information would be of use to you.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.