A council continued to pay a carer for two years despite the child moving on.

Dumfries and Galloway Council intends to recover the £30,000 overpayment and said it would “learn any lessons” from the incident to ensure it does not happen again.

The error was highlighted during an internal audit of the local authority’s processes for fostering, adoption and kinship care payments.

In the 2022-23 report, the council said it was making payments for 485 young people in a typical month.

It reported spending £2.8m in fostering, £156,000 in adoption and £2.2m in kinship care.

The audit concluded that the payment system provided an “acceptable control environment” but said “some specific weaknesses” needed to be addressed.

It highlighted one case of concern, reporting: “We note that a kinship carer continued to be paid when the child was no longer staying with them.

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“Management have agreed to check each scheduled payment run for accuracy before payment.”

The payment was said to have continued for two years after the placement ended and the child was being looked after by others.

The report said: “An overpayment of £30,000 is now due to be recovered.”

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To avoid any further overpayments, the audit has recommended that the social worker responsible for each child should check every month that they are placed with the stated carer.

The report said: “A check will be done of all payments each month to ensure that they are correct. Processes will be reviewed to see if further control improvements may be made.”

Dumfries and Galloway Council hopes to avoid any similar incidents in the future.

A spokesperson said: “Our council services rely on the accuracy and reliability of our council systems.

“We will learn any lessons from this particular case and apply them as appropriate to try and ensure this does not happen again.”

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