More than 100 children in care with Herts County Council had at least three placements in a year

More than 100 of Hertfordshire’s looked-after children had three or more placements in 2024.

According to the latest data presented to a meeting of Hertfordshire County Council’s (HCC) children, families and young people cabinet panel on Tuesday (March 11), 1,028 children and young people – including 150 separated migrant children – were in the care of the local authority at the end of December.

Of those, 126 – about one in eight – had had three or more placements in the previous 12 months.

Paul Dryden, HCC’s senior performance and development manager, suggested children and young people new to care were more likely to have experienced multiple moves rather than those who have been in the system for a year or more.

He said factors were the need to find the right placement for the child and the ‘sufficiency’ of placements, highlighting a national shortage of foster carers.

Mr Dryden also reported that since the end of the year the proportion of looked after children to have had three or more placements had dropped from 12.3% to 12.1%.

He said that with work being put in place to improve placement stability, the council’s performance relative to others was expected to improve.

Director of children and families El Mayhew highlighted the council’s work to increase residential provision and to support foster carers to address placement ‘sufficiency’. She highlighted the work to ensure children can stay with their families, without the need to come into the care system.

She suggested that for some children – including those who may be placed for adoption – it would be very difficult to reduce the number of placements to fewer than three.

The 1,028 looked after children at the end of 2024 was up 63 on the 965 – including 149 separated migrant children – at the end of 2023.

According to the data, 70.4% of those who had been in care for more than two-and-a-half years had been in the same placement for the past two years or longer.

The proportion of children or young people leaving care either through adoption or the issue of a special guardianship order (SGO) fell last year: from 13.5% in 2023 to 7.1% in 2024 through adoption and from 7.9% to 6.8% in the same period through an SGO.

An SGO is a court order that appoints one or more individuals to be a child’s special guardian until they are 18.