[13
APR 00] COVENTRY CITY COUNCIL NEWS
New Foster Scheme For Disabled Children
BY ANTONY HOPKER
A
specialist fostering scheme for children with disabilities is to be
set up in Coventry to improve care and cut costs.
Ten
disabled youngsters currently have to live in Birmingham and commute
to Coventry to see their families and go to school because there are
not enough people in the city to look after them.
The
Social Services department, which is responsible for looking after the
children, has now teamed up with children’s charity Barnardos to
develop new ways of keeping the youngsters in Coventry.
It
is hoped that the scheme will cut the £615,000 cost of placing the
children out of the city and save £17,000 transport charges a year.
The
idea is to develop a project similar to one run successfully in
Kidderminster, which will place children with foster families in the
city.
Barnados
are to recruit, train and support foster carers so they are able to
provide long-term family placements for children with both learning
and physical difficulties.
The
cost is expected to be around £30,000 per child per year.
Initially
the project will run for a year to allow the development work to take
place.
The
ten children placed outside the city will be given priority for the
new placements, followed by any child whose placement is known to be
in risk of breaking down.
Cllr
John Mutton, chairman of the Children and Young People’s policy team
said:
“By
developing a local service for children with disabilities we can
improve their quality of life by helping them see their families
more often and reducing the time they spend travelling to and from
the city.
“Barnados
have a proven track record in providing this type of service for
children with complex needs and for a relatively smaller investment,
this scheme can help reduce the financial cost of placing children
out of the city in the medium and longer term.”
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