A WARNING flag has been issued over the financial pressures facing children’s services in the borough.

The town hall is one of several across Greater Manchester to have highlighted an overspend in the first quarter of the year.

A budget monitoring report has revealed the borough’s children’s services have had an "adverse variation" of more than £1m, meaning it has spent more than initially forecast, predominantly on external care placements.

Officers have informed council bosses that they expect to balance the budget by the end of the year through "one-off corporate initiatives".

But the budget position in the first part of the year will serve as further evidence of the financial challenge facing the town hall.

It comes weeks after the children’s commissioner for England called for councils to be granted an urgent cash injection with councils across Greater Manchester having to pour more funds into children’s services.

Wigan was one of only two councils across Greater Manchester- along with Trafford- not to report an overspend in 2017/18 although the town hall has said rising numbers of ‘complex cases’ are adding significant financial pressures.

Salford and Oldham, along with Wigan, have identified overspends in the first quarter of this year.

A vast majority of Wigan’s £1.3m overspend for specialist services in recent months is the £1.1m attributed to costs associated with "costly" out of borough placements for children in care.

James Winterbottom, director for children’s services, said Wigan Council is trying to find more borough based foster carers.

He said: “The demand for foster carers in the borough has had an impact on our ability to place children in care in the borough and we have had to resort to costly out of borough placements.

“That is why we are committed to eliminating the need for out of borough placements by 2020 and have introduced The Deal for Foster Carers to encourage more people to come forward to provide a home for children in need of care.

“Every time we place a child with an internal foster carer instead of a private foster carer we can save an average of £28,000 in costs applied by agencies so this is why we are focusing on increasing the number of carers here in Wigan borough.

“We recruited the fourth largest number of foster carers in the North West last year and want to recruit 100 extra foster carers by 2020.

“We are anticipating that our work to further increase the availability of local foster carers will help to reduce care costs and continue our improving outcomes, along with a range of measures to meet the needs of our population within the funding provided by government.

Council reforms- based around the "No Wrong Door" approach- are hoped to deliver efficiency savings and improve life chances, the council has previously said.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, recently said the government has a "moral imperative" to address the funding situation for local authorities.

Youngsters are not now getting basic help early enough due to the pressures on children’s services departments and cuts to other areas of support such as youth centres and Sure Starts, she said.

A government spokesperson said £200bn has been made available to councils up to 2020 for local services including those for children and young people.

The financial monitoring report, presented to council bosses earlier this month, reads: “There are also a number of other new and innovative ways of working within children’s social care that are still currently being developed.

“This programme therefore requires careful management to minimise the risk of adversely impacting on the wider care system whilst also ensuring that changes are made at the earliest opportunity to target where appropriate those areas where there are significant budget pressures.”