salsa-king

taken from the Nottm Evening Post the other night, it can be read here..
Notts taxpayers' £20,000 flights bill for child reunions

But to save you clicking the link I'll copy paste it below....



Notts taxpayers pick up bill for family flights
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 07:30


TAXPAYERS in Notts are funding thousands of pounds worth of flights around the world so children in care can visit their estranged families.
Rather than demanding that the families pay the travel costs or come back to the county where their children were left, the tab is being picked up from the council's coffers.
In the last three years, the county council has spent almost £20,000 on flights allowing youngsters to see parents and relatives who have left the country.
It includes 17 trips to Palma, in Spain, for one child to see their family, as well as ten trips to Dusseldorf and nine to Hanover involving other families.
An officer and a child in care also flew as far as Lagos in Nigeria last summer – with flights costing £1,753 – to assess whether her parents were suitable to look after her.

Other destinations flown to by clients and officers from the children and young persons department – formerly social services – include Aberdeen (four trips), Belfast (three trips), Glasgow (three trips), Cologne, Germany (three trips), Munchengladbach, Germany (two trips), Munster, Germany (one trip), and Riga in Latvia (one trip).


Newark MP Patrick Mercer said: "I'm not sure why we as taxpayers are picking up the tab. I would have thought the logical thing would be for the parents to come and see the children.
"I think it is quite a lot of money for the county council to have to shell out and I suspect this is money which would be quite difficult to justify."
The details emerged after the Evening Post submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act on flights taken by councillors and officers over the last three years.

A total of 500 flights were taken by all departments, for civic visits, conferences and fact -finding exercises.
The cost of these flights, as well as connecting car charges and trains came to £81,383.
A county council spokesman said a social worker is required to accompany children and young people in care on "contact visits" to see family abroad and cost should not be a bar to this.
"In line with the Children's Act (1989), the council has a duty to promote contact between a child in care and their families if it is the best interests of the child.
"In such instances we cover travel costs of family contact visits for children in care whether their relatives live in the UK or abroad, said the spokesman.
"Where family contact visits are possible, they enable children to develop or maintain a sense of identity. They also help to develop relationships.
"'If family contact visits abroad meet this aim, the cost of these visits are far outweighed by the benefits for the child."

jon.robinson@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk







What are your thoughts, is it happening with other councils??


Phil

MrRA

A guy in work with myself has a landscaping company on the side which is actually doing quite well. He's been awarded a contract from the local council for the last two years runnning tending to 45 hanging baskets for the six 'summer' months.

£30,000 each year. I kid you not.

salsa-king

I'll do it for £29,999

Leslie

Ridiculous use of public money!

Les

ronjeramy

iTrader: (1)

No wonder he's doing quite well!

Jamie

A certain council i work for have just spent 185k on a dredging system that does not work and just made 150 peeps redundant and gave themselves a 12k each crimbo bonus

The Zohan

Perhaps the fights should all be one-way!

One of Jennys realtions works for a local council doing repairs and maintenance to thier council houses - he has no end of stories of hoses wrecked by chavscum and/or druggies, etc which cost 1000's to repair, not general maintenance.

A freind of mine had a contract with NBC to sort out a payment system for the care servcices - children in care/special needs moving into northampton from other areas had not be charged back to the original council or such - this came to some 1/4 million and had gone on for years and years - one example of many i am sure.
we spend some £ 1250.00 on council tax - spent wisely and in our best interests - i do doubt it

cster

£20,000 - who gives a ****?
Maybe some of the children will stay with their parents and save us a shed load more than this amount?

coolangatta

Same people who complain about the price of sending these kids to see their families would also complain if it was known that they weren't allowed to do so Bloody Brits are a complicated race

c-o-l-e

If you think that is bad you should try asking why councils pay for transporting Catholic kids to Catholic schools when the Catholic church already receives money to do it itself.

salsa-king

ok, why do they?

SlimJ_2005

Our council setup this: Welcome to Kent TV | Connecting the county of Kent cant remember what figure was spent developing it (think it was over £1m???), but it hasn't been successful so they want to throw another £200,000 at it!! Developed by Bob Geldof's company Ten Alps...

I really don't know why they bothered in the first place, it was never going to succeed!!

c-o-l-e

Because it's a universal policy to give transport to all schools, but Catholic schools already receive funding to do it themselves from the Catholic church.