6% fall in children in care of Essex County Council (From Maldon and Burnham Standard)
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6% fall in children in care of Essex County Council
9:00pm Thursday 4th October 2012 in Local News By Luke Lambert
THE number of children in the care of Essex County Council has dropped by over 6 per cent in 2012.
At the period ending March 2012 there had been a 6.3 per cent decline in the amount of children in the care of Essex County Council compared to the period March 2010 – March 2011. This was compared to a national increase of 2.3 per cent in the same period.
Essex County Council also revealed that 14 per cent of those leaving care were adopted by another family compared to 10 per cent in the county in 2010-11. 95 of 685 children leaving care were adopted between March 2011 - March 2012 as opposed to 45 adopted out of 480 the previous year. This again beat the national average which saw 13 per cent of children leaving care adopted.
Between March 2010 and March 2011 there were 1,585 children in the care of Essex County Council whereas there were 1,485 in the same period 12 months later.
Essex County Councillor Ray Gooding, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, said: “Essex County Council is pleased to see the good work of our Children Social Care team reflected in the newly-released figures recording the number of children in care and leaving care."
