Speaking at a cabinet meeting, council leader Daniel Cowan outlined the investments and savings within the Labour-led joint administration’s 2025/26 budget.
The budget includes funds for a children’s services placement “brokerage team” who will be dedicated to cutting the £352,000 per annum it currently costs to place a child in a private children’s home.
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Mr Cowan said: “We’re going to invest to cut. We’re going to invest in four new jobs in the children’s services department around brokerage for children’s placements .
“We’re doing that so we can cut the profits of greedy, private capitalists gouging money out of children’s services – children in need. That’s the only cut you will see in this budget. We’re investing in the team to do the job. To go out there to cut their profits so we can put that back into supporting services .”
The council says much of the currently predicted £4.7 million deficit in the current year’s budget is down to the cost of residential and external foster care places within children’s services which has resulted in a £1.62 million draw down from earmarked reserves.
The council is also reopening a small children’s home in Caulfield Road, Shoebury to help cut the cost of private placements.
Speaking at the meeting, Lydia Hyde, councillor responsible for climate, environment and waste, said: “This initiative addresses not only the needs of the children and better futures for all children in Southend, it addresses the reality that we’ve got this huge financial pressure from private companies having huge profits of up to 60 per cent on some children’s placements. It’s absolutely hideous.
“We’re taking a careful but ambitious approach to looking at Caulfield Road as a starting point but allowing us to have not only more control, its an offer in Southend. At the moment we do have many of children having care outside of Southend and having more space in the community they already know is really important.”
Ms Hyde added: I commend the team for looking innovatively at this and coming up with an approach that will tackle the profiteering of these companies to get that money and put it back into the children themselves because that’s where the money should be going, not lining the pockets of fat cats.”