A CARE crisis in Greater Manchester means children are being housed up to 300 miles from their homes.
A lack of foster parents and specialist care facilities has forced councils to place children further afield - costing taxpayers millions of pounds extra every year.
In one case a child was forced to spend a week in Cornwall at a cost of '7,500 because there was nowhere suitable in his home town Rochdale.
The town council has now revealed its child care service is expected to be '1.8m over budget at the end of the financial year - despite getting an extra '1.5m last April.
Steve Titcombe, the town hall's head of child care, said: "There are more than 200 children living with foster families in Rochdale at present, but we need homes for many more.
"These children are all individuals and need to live with foster carers carefully chosen to meet their individual needs."
Last year Manchester blamed similar problems for needing an additional '15m for social services.
The number of children in care rocketed from 949 in 1992 to 1,241 a decade later, with 62 youngsters placed outside the city at a cost of up to '250,000 a year.
The social services budget has continued to rise and the department is one of just two, along with education, exempted from a belt-tightening exercise aimed at cutting costs by nine per cent by 2007/08.
The council recently launched a drive for foster parents to clear a list of more than 130 children waiting for long-term placements.
Shaun McLurg, assistant director for children and families, said: "The shortage of foster carers is a well-recognised problem nationally."
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Children Excluded From Access.
We are the witnesses, the people on the frontline who are shocked into awareness of child abuse and then forced by our fear for the children to contact the child protection authorities. We are the aunties, the long-term carers, the extended family members, with and without blood ties. We love and know the children well. We have all experienced the reporting of child abuse and the child protection process. A process in which we are isolated, marginalised, disbelieved and insulted. Often to see the children further abuused. We have no rights, we can only watch as the abuse continues and our bond of love and trust with the children is torn up. We could go to the courts to seek access but we are aware of the financial cost of this, the length of time it can take, how dismissive the courts are of us and how worthless an access order can be. Most of us would not use the courts in any case because we know that any legal proceedings can escalate family conflict and be detrimental to the children. Our child care system will remain full of very unhappy, isolated, damaged children if we don't go back to the start and make real changes now. every child has 'A Right Of Access' to the love and care of the people who love them.