Home » Wrexham social care costs expected to skyrocket as new policies and private sector withdrawals loom

Wrexham social care costs expected to skyrocket as new policies and private sector withdrawals loom

Cllr Mark Pritchard (Pic: Wrexham Council)

WREXHAM Council leader Mark Pritchard has said his biggest fear for the new financial year is the ‘eyewatering’ cost of social care to the council.

Updating Wrexham County Borough Council’s Customers, Performance, Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee on budget saving and monitoring, he identified social care costs as the biggest budget concern the council has for 2025/26.

The challenge comes as the Welsh Government legislates to make social care for children not-for-profit by April 2026. While the move has been heralded as positive for children’s services in the long-term, the short-term consequence means private sector partners may begin to withdraw their services, leaving local authorities to pick up the tab.

In Wrexham the annual social care budget is around £100m, with around £70m of that delivered through partnerships with private sector organisations. According to Mr Pritchard, there will be some financial pain before Wrexham Council sees the benefits of the change.

“I’ve been in a meeting with the six North Wales council leaders, the First Minister, civil servants and other cabinet members discussing finance,” he said.

“The pressures in social care I don’t think any of us truly recognise. the demand within the service is outstripping the financial provision we have.

“We can’t keep up with it now – well we can, but we can’t keep up with the expenditure. We have to continue to offer out-of-county placements or take children into care where a judgement is made.

“Sadly the responsibility comes to us. Social care for children looks after the most vulnerable people in society. It is a safety net because there are some terrible people out there but that’s what we’re here for.

“I can’t discuss the exact costings in open session but they are eyewatering. I don’t think any of us have the answers on when or if the demand pressures will stop, they just keep on growing.

“It isn’t just here in Wrexham, it’s across the country.  Social care is the one budget pressure that worries me. I hope at some point in the future it will peak but at the moment it keeps growing.”

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Mr Pritchard also revealed that over the last five years Wrexham Council has invested an additional £25 million in social care above the annually set budgets to meet growing demand.

The budget report for this year already shows that social care savings of £3.6m due before the end of the financial year are still at risk of not being realised.

Councillor Rob Walsh, Lead Member for Children’s Services, admitted “If we’re going to see the flow of children coming into the service slowing down or reversing we need to have good preventative services.

“We’re already working towards that but it won’t happen overnight. It’ll be many years before we see that impact financially. The not-for-profit plans will increase pressure on the council.

“In the short-term we’re trying to change our working practices with care closer to home – bringing more services in-house to improve quality of care for our looked-after children and to avoid expensive agency costs.

“But where we make progress in one area we find pressure in another and it is a bit like firefighting.

“Long-term that cannot be the answer but this is a statutory service. We cannot easily make cuts to social care in the same way we can make cuts to other services. If we do that we are putting the most vulnerable children in the authority at great risk.

“One example of our preventative strategy is our one-stop shop online portal. One of the problems we’ve had in the past is that people needing help go round in circles because no child or family has precisely the same issue. So they could sometimes be sent to the wrong place, get frustrated and give up. At that point we have failed them already.

“We created a portal where there was ‘no wrong door’ – wherever people go via the portal they can be put in touch with the right people for their specific problem and get help quickly to prevent problems escalating.

“I am hopeful we can meet most of our in-year savings target because we were realistic when we discussed them last year.”

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