ESSEX County Council has said action is needed to tackle the "broken" children's care market – in which 50 cases are costing taxpayers £30million between them. The problem has left children services at Essex County Council with a £10m over spend on its £150m budget.

The council has said since setting the 2025/26 budget, Children and Families have faced continued pressure on placements, in particular children with complex needs. Whilst the social care model continues to work and so care numbers remain low, it is the lack of sufficiency in the market, which is having a significant impact on the weekly price for care placements that the authority now has to pay.

It adds that whilst there are a number of projects in place to deliver a reduction in the use of these placements, their implementation is taking longer than originally expected. This has resulted in the need to rely, in particular, on the higher usage of external residential and fostering than originally budgeted. Other settings are also overspent and children in care placements in total accounts for £11.5m of the forecast over spend variance

Cllr John Spence, Cabinet Member for Children's Services, Adult Social Care, Public Health and Integration, told full council on October 14: "Because that market is broken, I can look at 50 cases in this county who between them are taking around £30 million to £40 million of care between them and that chairman is a growing number and that is intolerable

"I need to say to this council and I will say it again for the benefit of our young people and for the absolute survival and sustainability of the councils to follow us. We need action within this council with our district and boroughs and city partners and from national government."

Essex County Council says residential care is more than 10 times more expensive than placing a child with a foster family. The council has said it will not reach the targets of 74 per cent of all children in care being placed in foster placements by 2028 and 95 per cent of all children in fostering being placed in Essex County Council's in-house fostering provision.

At the beginning of the year, the county had 800 children being fostered in Essex, of whom 688 were at the last count through internal fostering, where they benefit from all the training and support packages that the council can offer, at a cost of around £26,000 a year. The remainder are with independent foster agencies, who charge around double that.

However, it had nearly 100 children in residential care at an average cost of £300,000 per child per annum. The council says the top 15 residential care placements collectively cost nearly £10 million alone.