 The Cost Calculator for Children's Services
Original work funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Current work funded by number of organisations including local authorities, Department for Children, Schools and Families, and Economic and Social Research Council.
The Cost Calculator for Children's Services (CCfCS) was developed as part of the CCFR research project:
Costs and Consequences of Different Types of Childcare Provision
The Cost Calculator is a
computer software application and costing methodology designed to assist local authorities and other agencies to monitor the true costs of services to children and thus to improve strategic planning and commissioning.
The overall objective is for the Cost Calculator to be used to calculate the true costs to the public purse of providing services to children with extensive needs and to explore how these might be better configured to improve outcomes.
- Facilitates comparisons between the relative value of different care types
- Makes it easier to estimate the potential benefits of introducing a range of alternative packages
- Uses information readily available in local authority systems
- Calculates costs from the bottom up
- Combines fee/allowance costs with the costs of social work support for placements
- Calculates individual costs based on the actual care history of each child
- Relates costs to children’s needs and allocates children to cost-related needs groups
- Presents results for any child, group of children or type of placement by any time period
- Analyses costs by outcomes
- Unit costs used include support as well as expenditure
- Numerous and extensive variations are taken into account
- Offers a longitudinal perspective and the facility to perform What if? analysis
- Allows development in response to user requests and feedback
For more information on the Cost Calculator and how to obtain a licence for its use, please click here to visit the dedicated CCfCS website
The current version of the Cost Calculator allows the calculation of costs for social care processes for looked after children. Further research is already underway to develop the Cost Calculator to incorporate unit costs for all services that children receive within specific time frames. These will include the unit costs of social care, education, health, mental health, socio-legal and youth justice processes. Click here to download the Cost Calculator Strategy Paper.
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