The number of children looked after by Swindon Council has risen dramatically in the last two years, and the authority aims to replace an obsolete home with two new ones.

CARE homes have acquired a bad reputation. Today they are seen as a last resort for children who end up being looked after by the council.

In Swindon, 85 per cent of such youngsters are placed with foster families. But for the most troubled children, specialist residential care is the only option.

And faced with a growing number of minors requiring such help, Swindon Council has announced plans to build two new six-bedroom homes.

In the last two years, the number of children looked after by the council has risen from 175 to 211.

Swindon's head of children and family services, Terry Scragg, explained why numbers have increased so dramatically.

He said: "There aren't any more young people coming into the system what's happening is they are staying longer.

"We are not able to return as many children to their families as we were.

"Young people are now presented to us with far more complex problems than was previously the case. I think that adolescence is an increasingly complex time for kids as the world becomes more complex.

"With the options and the things kids can do in this society ever more complex, we see more difficulties coming out of that.

"Swindon is not unique in this; it is a nationwide phenomenon."

Contributory factors include an increased tendency for extended families to live further away from one another and unable to help troubled parents. Without such support, parents can find it increasingly hard to cope.

Care homes in recent years have come in for much negative publicity. In north Wales in 2000, an inquiry led to 28 care home staff being named as suspected child abusers.

And closer to home, a Swindon man won compensation from Wiltshire County Council in 1999 after suffering abuse at Cleeve House children's home near Malmesbury in the early 1980s.

But Mr Scragg said controls would be put in place to ensure that the two new homes in Swindon were as safe as possible.

He added: "What we've got now is the national care standards agency we've learnt a lot from things like the Welsh inquiry.

"That's why we are keeping these units small and keeping it transparent with a lot of mechanisms in place so kids can let people know if anything is wrong."

The two six-bed units will be built on new housing estates, one in the Priory Vale Northern Development area and the other in the proposed Front Garden southern development area. They will be on land set aside for affordable housing.

It is proposed to establish them before other residents move in to prevent the opposition which may come from building a care home in an existing neighbourhood.

They will cater for children with emotional or behavioural problems which make them unsuitable for fostering.

They could also house children who feel unable to live with a family which is not their own.

Currently, such children are housed in co-operation with other local authorities, with some as far away as Newcastle.

Mr Scragg said: "Part of what we try to do is keep kids local to their own communities it is more settling for them.

"Moving into somewhere like a children's home is a big enough step for any child without having to change their communities and put them far away from family and friends."

Children with severe emotional or psychological problems, or who are violent, will still go to specialist facilities elsewhere in the country.

Youngsters end up in care for a variety of reasons.

A single mother may find herself in hospital and put her children in care because she doesn't have an extended family close at hand.

In other cases, children with behavioural problems may become too much for their parents.

Around 40 of the 210 children looked after by Swindon Council social services are there because of neglect and sexual or physical abuse.