It costs more to place a child in the care of a local authority than it does to send a child to a top boarding school, and there are substantial variations in costs both between and within authorities.

This book gets to the bottom of the costs of care and provides an insight into how these variations in cost relate to differences in children's needs, and most importantly, whether higher costs reflect better services and better outcomes for children.

Costs and Consequences for Children Placed Away from Home draws from new original research, and considers the implications for best practice and future policy. It also features information about a newly pioneered resource: a fully workable decision analysis model designed for use in local authorities which uses historical data for each child to calculate the probable cost consequences of difference placement choices.

This book sheds light on how to calculate the financial and social costs of care, and will be invaluable to both social work managers and policy makers working in children's services.

Harriet Ward is Director of the Centre for Child and Family Research and Senior Research Fellow at Loughborough University, UK. She has undertaken extensive research in the field of assessing need and evaluating outcomes in children's services. Lisa Holmes is a Research Associate at the Centre for Child and Family Research at Loughborough University, UK. Her research interests include the provision of support services for foster carers, costs of foster care, and youth justice. Jean Soper is based at Leicester University, UK.

Preface. Authors' note. 1. Introduction. 2. Identifying Local Authorities and Children for Exploring the Costs of Care. 3. The Development of Unit Costs for Social Care Processes. 4. Placement Patterns, Processes and Costs. 5. Children and Costs. 6. Need, Cost, Service and Outcome. 7. The Relationship Between Cost and Value: Children's Views of the Value of Services. 8. The Cost Calculator for Children's Services. 9. Conclusion: Cost Calculations and their Implications for Policy and Practice. References. Index.