Hundreds of children in care have been placed more than 20 miles away from home in north and west Cumbria, new figures show.

Figures from the Department for Education show 482 children in care in the Cumberland Council area as of March – 263 (55 per cent) of which were placed more than 20 miles from home.

This follows a nationwide trend.

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More than 83,000 children were in care across England as of March, with 18,040 (22 per cent) placed at least 20 miles away from their home.

Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of Become – a charity for children and young people in care – said children being moved due to a lack of suitable homes nearby is ‘simply not good enough’.

She said: "The persistently high number of children in care means no let-up for a system that’s already on its knees and failing to meet the needs of young people.

"We’ve heard time and again from children in care the devasting impact this has when they are separated from brothers and sisters and pulled out of their school, which often happens without warning and sometimes multiple times a year," she added.

She urged the central government to take ‘decisive action’ to stop these numbers getting worse.

Linda Briheim-Crookall, head of policy and practice development at Coram Voice, said being moved can make it difficult for children to maintain relationships and support networks.

"This directly impacts their well-being but can also make it more difficult to access other activities and services like mental health support," she added.

This is something Cumberland Councillor Emma Williamson (Kells and Sandwith, Labour) has sought to address at the council – fighting the symptom and not the cause so that the worst-case scenario of moving children away from their homes is kept as a last resort.

From when she joined the council, one of the projects she wanted to deliver to realise a ‘utopia’ in the area was building council-owned residential children’s homes, she said.

Joining that was investing more in foster care and ‘trying to find more solutions around kinship care’, Cllr Williamson added.

“Those are all the things that we're doing.

“We're currently looking at building two new residential children's homes in Cumberland.”

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Additional funding for the council’s fostering hub and training on the ‘Mockingbird Model’ – a model of foster care involving a group of up to ten fostering families called a 'constellation', at the centre of which is one foster home called the 'hub' – has also been helpful, Cllr Williamson said.

“We're investing in some of our more trained and more experienced foster carers, going out and supporting other foster carers, and one of the things I'm proud of is our numbers (of children in care) reduced as we started to look at kinship options, foster options, because, no matter what, children should remain with their family first if that's safe to do.”

Martin Birch, director of children and family wellbeing at the council, said the Cumberland Council area brings geographical challenges.

“20 miles in a city like Sunderland or Manchester in huge, but in Cumberland it’s virtually nothing.

“For us, that’s quite a disadvantage when we measure in this way.

“However, our cared-for figure has reduced – when we took over, our cared-for figure was around 529.

“Currently it’s 479, so our direction of travel is in the right direction.

“As a consequence, we can accommodate our children closer to the communities.”

Mr Birch attributed this success to ‘management grip’ doing ‘far more direct work with families’.

A Department for Education spokesperson said they want to make sure every child has the opportunities they need to thrive.

"We’re already investing £40million to recruit more foster carers and better support kinship carers, as well as providing £400million to open more children’s homes where they’re most needed.

"For too long, the children’s social care system has been left to fester, but we are now determined to deliver meaningful reform once and for all to deliver better life chances for some of the most vulnerable children in our country."

Cumbria needs more fosterers - if you would like to learn more about fostering, speak to Cumbria Fostering at 0300 019 0200 or visit cumbriafostering.org.uk.