Learning disabilities and autism

1) How many people with learning disabilities and/or autism have you placed out of area under Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards or the Mental Health Act in each of the last 5 financial years? Please provide the total number for each year.

Please see the table below:

Period No. Placed OLA
2014/15 *
2015/16 13
2016/17 10
2017/18 16
  • * This denotes a number less than 5 and which therefore cannot be disclosed.   Given the very specific circumstances of the request, combined with a very low total would risk identifying the individuals concerned.   This would then be a disclosure of their personal information which would be a breach of the first data protection principle.   This information is therefore exempt pursuant to s.40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

2) What is the cost to the council for these places, in each of the last 5 financial years? Please provide full expenditure for each year.

Please see the table below:

Period Cost of placements
2014/15 £ 295,260.90
2015/16 £ 779,754.13
2016/17 £ 651,234.67
2017/18  £ 903,860.03

 3) What has the council spent on supporting families to visit relatives in out of area placements, in each of the last 5 financial years. Please provide full expenditure for each year.

Devon County Council do not hold a central record of this information so this information would have to be manually extracted from each individual record.

To obtain the financial information from each record would, in itself, be a significant task and would take approximately one hour.  We can confirm that we currently have 43 clients and this would therefore take around 43 hours to obtain this information for the current financial year alone.    This is in excess of the appropriate limit and this information is therefore exempt from disclosure pursuant to s.12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.