SPIRALLING costs to house Middlesbrough’s most vulnerable youngsters hundreds of miles from home have triggered a new approach.

Bosses are working to plug a £4.4m black hole in Middlesbrough Council’s budget in April – with most of this cost due to the high cost of housing children in care outside the borough. 

Now the council is adopting a new approach called “No Wrong Door” and building a new children’s home to help ease the pressures. 

The change of tack will see a new residential hub built and finished on Spencerfield Crescent, in Thorntree, this April. 

Councillors heard last week the authority is paying an average of £8,000 per week for each of its looked after youngsters.

The Department for Education (DfE) is giving the cash-strapped authority £2.7m to help fund the new “No Wrong Door” programme to reduce the number of looked after kids in the town and ease pressures.

North Yorkshire County Council adopted the approach in 2015 – and a council report states this resulted in a “dramatic fall in young people missing from care or in contact with police”.

Middlesbrough wants the approach to reduce the number of 12 to 17-year-olds in “expensive external placements” and reunite more youngsters with families. 

The scale of demand on children’s services has raised a number of concerns at many meetings in Middlesbrough in the past 12 months.

Leaders on the council’s executive agreed the new strategy at Middlesbrough Town Hall on Tuesday (January 21). 

Executive member Cllr Ashley Waters asked how much money the move would save. 

But Helen Watson, executive director of children’s services, said it was “hard to put a figure on it”. 

She added: “We know this initiative has worked extremely well in North Yorkshire.

“It’s been very heavily evaluated over a period of years (and) there have been some very positive impacts on the numbers of children coming into the care system. 

“Although the programme is around a building, this is about working in a very different way. 

“There will be a multi-agency team who’ll work on an outreach basis with up to 40 young people on an “edge of care” basis. 

“There will undoubtedly be an impact (on costs) but it’s very hard to put a figure on it.”