NOTTINGHAMSHIRE County Council is to spend nearly £1.7 million creating 40 new posts to address the continued increasing demand on its children’s social care services.
Between June 2010 and December last year, Nottinghamshire has seen a 44 per cent increase in children in care, with the number of children being referred for assessment up 8 per cent over the same period. There has also been a clear rise in child protection work.
Committee chairman for children and young people’s services, Coun Philip Owen said: “This has placed significant pressure on our frontline staff managing child protection cases, children in care and staff in our fostering and adoption teams.
“These additional permanent jobs will ensure that key services have the capacity to meet current and predicted demand and additional responsibilities that have arisen out of the future direction of services for children in care.”
The extra 40 posts are being funded as part of the increase in thecouncil’s children’s social care budget for 2013/14, agreed at a meeting of its full council last month.
Work has already started to recruit the staff. The new posts include 20 social workers to be spread across the council’s assessment, looked after children and district child protection teams and five supervising social workers (plus a further five for 2014/15) to increase the fostering service’s capacity.
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