1. How many looked after children were placed in an unregistered children’s home (not registered at the time of placement) for the financial years, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23?
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. This is because we do not hold a centralised record of the information requested. Therefore, in order to obtain it, we would need to manually check thousands of care files for each financial year to ascertain if the child was placed in a children’s home, and whether or not that home was unregistered.
In the interests of providing advice and assistance, we are able to provide you with figures for all those in semi-independent, not subject to children’s homes regulations accommodation. This includes placement types such as hostels, YMCA’s etc.
| 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
| 88 | 93 | 134 |
Please note, where a child’s placement spans across financial years, the child will be counted separately in each financial year.
2. For the financial year 2022/23, what were the ages of these children?
There were 131 children aged between 16 and 17 years. To provide the remaining information may identify the children, due to low numbers. This would risk a disclosure of their personal information and would be a breach of the first data protection principle. This information is therefore exempt from disclosure pursuant to Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
3. How much was spent on unregistered children’s homes for looked after children in 2022/23?
£9,866,609