NEW approaches to dealing with children and families could be brought in across rural Dorset over the next three years.

Children’s Director Sarah Parker says Dorset Council needs to undergo a change of culture around decision making and learn to react smarter and faster to the information it, and partners, already have on families.

She says that in many cases decisions will need to be made earlier which, in turn, should reduce the need for long-term involvement and the number of ‘looked after’ children in the care of the council.

Cabinet brief holder for the service, Cllr Andrew Parry, says the change in emphasis is a reaction to increasing referrals and a rise in the complexity of problems social workers now have to help families deal with. He described Sarah Parker’s report as “radical in its thinking,” when commending it to the Dorset Council cabinet on Tuesday.

The director told councillors that safeguarding would remain of paramount importance along with managing risk appropriately: “It is really about a fundamental change in the way we work with children and families…it is a partnership approach which we need to drive forward…and we need to improve the quality of our work to get better outcomes.”

She said the exercise would involve the organisation looking at itself and its decision making processes and anticipated that it might take three years for what she described as ‘significant outcomes’ to emerge, although some changes should be achievable within a year.

The council currently has more than 400 children and young people in its care and during last year cared for more than 650 over the course of the 12 months. Increases of children in care in Dorset, as a percentage, have been above other south west counties and the national average.

A report before cabinet said that with average foster placements costing £30,000 a year for each child and other residential care averaging more than £130,000 a year the authority now faces a forecast overspend of £5.5million for the current financial year on its children’s budget.

Children in care generally do worse throughout their life than their peers, according to national research. This including higher rates of psychological disorders, poorer educational attainment and lower rates of employment.

Only 24.3 per cent of Dorset children in care eventually return to live with their families, compared to the national figure of 32.7 per cent.