Unregistered homes costing £11,800 a week as foster carer shortage continues across Bedford Borough

2 comments

1. Hasn’t it occured to councils the shortage of foster carers is linked to house prices and rents? 

   If people can’t afford to buy or rent houses with extra bedrooms then they can’t foster. 

2. I understand that higher interest rates mean that it is nowhere near as affordable to borrow heavily in order to invest in public services as it would have been pre-covid/Ukraine. 

   However, when it comes to situations like this, surely it would pay for itself to purchase/build new care homes and institute government-run care for these children? Likewise, the same goes for increasing funding for foster care. And the figures in this article – approximately £2000 per child per week – aren’t even as bad as others that have been reported across the UK.

   The cost for private sector care is so grossly extortionate and obscenely overinflated (to say nothing to the risk to child wellbeing from such haphazard operations), that whatever debt was incurred nationally would likely be far outweighed by the money saved, especially when looking at the long-term costs vs. benefits of such a policy.