Can you please provide the number of children taken into care by the council where a central reason for the decision was the family’s homelessness, in each of the last five financial years (2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 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. We can confirm that the numbers of children taken into care during this time period are as follows:
2018/19 298
2019/20 321
2020/21 358
2021/22 274
2022/23 374
An individual review of each of these cases to establish if the central reason was homelessness would therefore take longer than 18 hours.