THE number of children in care across Worcestershire has surged to 682 - a staggering 28 per cent rise in five years.

Worcestershire County Council is becoming increasingly concerned about the hike and is now forecasting a £4.5 million 'overspend' on dealing with the situation.

Your Worcester News can reveal how spending on looked-after children has ballooned £300,000 over-budget in just one month alone.

Councillor Adrian Hardman, the leader, has called it "a corporate problem" and says it now threatens to impact on other budgets like libraries and roads.

At the start of the 2013, 633 children were in some form of care and at the time experts were forecasting that it could surge past 700 by April 2015.

The county council now says those predictions are looking accurate, and is expecting to have to spend increasingly larger amount of taxpayers' cash dealing with it.

Figures back to 2009 reveal how it stood at 531 in Worcestershire in 2009.

Looked-after children typically end up in care homes, with foster carers, in hostels, secure units or some other form of temporary accommodation.

A new report for the Conservative cabinet has labelled children's social care "the most significant area of financial risk" at County Hall, and is forecasting an overspend of £4.5 million for the whole of 2014/15 financial year, which runs to March 2015.

It follows an increase of 1.9 per cent in council tax bills back in April, which was done to pour an extra £3.5 million into the under-pressure service – a figure which is no longer going to be anywhere near enough.

Spending on children's placements already tops £25 million a year.

Councillor Adrian Hardman, the leader, said: "We had to raise council tax (earlier this year) to deal with children's services and we are definitely flagging this area up again because it is becoming a corporate problem.

"It puts pressure on services like highways and libraries.

"This is becoming, once again a considerable pressure and it will mean the rest of the budget gets squeezed even further."

The council has taken on 30 extra staff and offered 'golden hellos' of up to £4,000 to boost recruitment.

The authority's current strategy for taking youngsters into care has been endorsed by the independent Worcestershire’s Safeguarding Children Board, which keeps an oversight of the data.

During the constant rises in the last two years poverty, rising drug and alcohol abuse, rule changes which require 16 and 17-year-olds to be looked-after and even immigration have been highlighted as factors.

The figure of 682 includes 360 children with a ‘permanency plan’, in other words those with long term care arrangements in place.

The rest are being worked on by frontline safeguarding teams and includes those in emergency care, children going through adoption or attempted reunification with parents, or kinship.