The number of looked after children has increased significantly over the last three years, both nationally and locally. Whilst anecdotally we were confident that children's needs were becoming more complex, we had no consistent way of measuring this. 

Finding the right placement for children has become increasingly challenging - we needed a way to understand children's needs so that we could find the right placement at the right time. We also needed to understand the needs across our looked after population so that we could make sure that the right placements were out there to meet those needs effectively, and achieve the best possible outcomes for our children.