Children in Care Statistics 2017 – 2022

1. For each of the financial years 17/18, 18/19, 19/20, 20/21, 21/22 and 22/23 (to date)

A. How many requests were made for financial support in cash or kind under section 17 (6) of the Children Act?

The report that produces these statistics was not available until 2019 when the new social care system went live. Prior to this we do not a record of the number of forms submitted, only the number of transactions. For example, a form may be submitted for 40 payments, and we would hold this on our finance system as 40 transactions, rather than for one form.

B. How many requests were granted for financial support in cash or kind under section 17(6) of the Children Act?

All forms we hold information on have been granted. Therefore the answer to this is the same as Q1A.

C. For each financial year what the total monetary value of the support provided in cash or kind under section 17 (6) of the Children Act?

2. For the same years, what was the total number of children in the care of your authority?

This information is published on the Department for Education website Children looked after in England including adoptions, Reporting Year 2021 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) links to the year 2021. You will need to “download all data (zip)”, this zip folder includes a data guidance file which outlines what is available in each file and whether it is at a national or local level.

For 2022/2023 there have been 966 children (up to September)

3. For the same years, how many approved foster carers (people who have completed all checks and training and are approved to carry out fostering) were registered with your local authority?

We only hold this information in calendar years, and only from 2020 onwards. Prior to this, we did not record data in the same way.

However we can provide you with the number of all approved foster carers; these include mainstream, Friends and Family, Foster to adopt and temporarily approved foster carers under reg 24, noted in the table below.