One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by decades of underinvestment".

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.