Growth Sector

[Elaine Kirk]

After reading the article
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Supporting children and families? Aye, that’ll be right!
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I decided during a brief stop off at the house to look at how the councils were progressing re all things Girfec.
First up in the search was Highlands Council with this doc (download)
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Demand on Service
on 31st May 2012 there were 170 children placed with them. This represents a significant increase in recent years.
For example, in the same period in 2011 there were
121 children placed in foster care,
and in 2010 the number was 116.

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A 46% increase over two years is not insignificant, surely some alarm bells must be ringing somewhere??? there has been no sudden breakdown of society, no sudden impoverishment, no anything I can think of that would explain this. Surely if there is such an increase it would be reflected elsewhere i.e. the prison population? crime figures? unemployment? sudden population surge?
There is an even more worrisome fact given in this document -
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National trends indicate that this increase in demand for foster placements is
likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Although Highland can
demonstrate a smaller increase than other parts of Scotland, because of the
emphasis placed on GIRFEC and early intervention, it is envisaged that there
will continue to be a need to increase both the number of placements and the
range of children that carers can accommodate

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It does seem that the increase is within the lucrative fostering industry as the adoption figures are rather static
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