Work with us
Calculating the cost of children in care
Clients
Coventry City Council, Cheshire West and Chester and East Cheshire Authorities
Expertise
Children and family research
Local authorities are required to deliver high quality social care services and placements for children in public care. Experts in our Centre for Child and Family Research have developed a Cost Calculator for Children’s Services to calculate costs and facilitate comparisons between the relative value of different types of childcare provision.
More than 20 English local authorities have been involved in the development and implementation of the Cost Calculator. Two of which have drawn on the University’s expertise through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme to customise the Cost Calculator. Coventry City Council sought to model the costs of the education processes undertaken to support children with special educational needs while Cheshire West and Chester and East Cheshire Authorities sought to incorporate health and mental health provision and to explore joint commissioning processes and how agreements are made for joint funding of services and placements.
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Impact
Impact (Coventry)
- Education module developed for use in Coventry City Council and other local authorities
- Social care unit costs established for looked after children in Coventry
- Methodology underlying the Cost Calculator has been used to inform local policy and practice
- The Associate recruited to undertake the project has subsequently been employed by the Council
Impact (Cheshire etc)
- Development of a framework for understanding and costing commissioning and decision making processes
- Social care unit costs established for looked after children in Cheshire
- Identification and costing of health and mental health processes undertaken by children’s services to support looked after children
- The KTP Associate recruited to undertake the project has subsequently gained employment with another council and her role involves implementing, customising and using the Cost Calculator