Childrens and Families

I'm a member of the Children's and Families scrutiny committee, and today was our latest meeting.

A lot of our time recently has been taking up with issues about "looked after children" - which means Children in Care. Essentially councils up and down the country are desperate to ensure that another Baby P doesn't happen, and this has been driven by a report by Lord Laming.

One intriguing thing I found out today was that the number of Children in care in Cheshire East increased from 308 in March 2008 to 348 in March 2009, an increase of 15%. This is quite an unexpected rise, possibly driven by social workers not wanting to take any risks.

Evidentially we'd prefer that there were no children in care at all, but then I'd rather they were in care than in danger and so it's difficult to feel concern about the increase in figures. I suppose the concern is that the Children were being looked after inappropriately in the first place and makes one wonder if we could have done anything to assist the parents before it got to this stage.

However the real problem is educational outcomes for these individuals. Of all the Children in care 15 took GCSE's last year, and only 2 passed 5 or more with A-C's. That's a serious concern to me.