BLACKBURN with Darwen Council is looking for two foster care style placements to keep suspected young offenders out of police or prison cells over night.

Its children's services boss Cllr Julie Gunn admits the shortage of two such beds in a report to the authority's executive board meeting on Thursday night.

The council has a budget of £68,983 to pay for the placements,

Cllr Gunn also says that the borough is lacking a speech and language worker to help deal with young offenders.

The details are revealed in her annual report on its plan for the Youth Justice Service (YJS), previously referred to as the Youth Offending Team (YOT).

Cllr Gunn's report says: "The YJS's primary function is to prevent offending and reoffending amongst children and young people and it is structured in a way to support children who have committed offences and been through a police and/or court process, and support those children identified as being at risk of offending.

"The service was inspected by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation in November 2022 and judged to be a ‘good’ service, within which there were a number of ‘outstanding’ features identified.

"Locally we have identified opportunities to develop and further enhance service delivery to young people in the borough by creating a designated Speech and Language resource.

"Funding for a post has been secured and the role is currently out to advert.

"A gap in delivery is recognised in the absence of a PACE bed (foster care type placement to avoid the detention of children in police custody overnight) and a remand bed (again a foster care type placement, but longer term to prevent children being remanded or sentenced into the secure custodial estate).

"Efforts to recruit to this role are extensive and extend to collaborating with partners from the community and charitable sector, as well as with the new Fostering Hub.

"This will be an invaluable resource once secured to actively avoid the detention of children in police custody and the secure estate

"The annual remand grant of £68,983 has already been received and is used to resource the detention of any children remanded into the secure estate whilst awaiting trial or sentence.

"This is a cost that is passed to the local authority."