Girl, 13, with complex needs housed 240 miles away from family

The family of a girl with complex needs face a 480-mile (772km) round trip to visit her in residential care due to a lack of available accommodation.

Sophie McNab, 13, was placed in a full-time facility in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway during the summer – a five-hour drive from her home in Inverness.

Her father Iain and stepmother Jaime said no alternative was available locally and one of them would have had to give up work to look after Sophie, who is non-verbal.

A spokesperson for Highland Council said the local authority "recognised the difficulty" posed to Sophie's family, but expanded accommodation would not be ready until next autumn.

Jaime said full-time care for Sophie became necessary because of a lack of before and after-school provision in the Highlands.

Sophie previously split her time between the family home in the Leachkin area of Inverness and the Orchard, a council-run residential and respite care facility in the city.

However, over-capacity issues at the Orchard during the summer meant Sophie also spent a couple of nights a week at an Airbnb let with agency carers. Iain said Sophie managed but that all the changes became unsettling for her.

Iain said the offer of residential accommodation in Annan, about 13 miles (20km) from the border with England, was the only way he and Jaime could continue working.

However, he said the family was now "limited" in the amount of time they could spend with her due to the distance.

"We can't see her as frequently, can't see her for short spells," Iain said.

"We are kind of limited in how often we can see her, and for what duration, factoring in the cost of mileage, and travel, and potentially having to take time off work.

"Whereas if she was local, it would be dead easy to bring her back for a weekend, and we could have much more frequent contact over short spells with her, rather than having to plan a long trip and a week's holiday essentially."

Iain said the family had not been able to visit Sophie since she moved on the advice of carers in order to settle in.

He added Sophie's status as non-verbal also made phone calls difficult and the family were trying to set up video-calling to keep in touch.

Jaime said Sophie also struggles with people she associates with a certain place not being in that location.

She said: "Previously, when we used to drop her off for respite, as soon as she saw that physical building it was time for us to leave because, for her, that building comes with carers.

"We're not sure how much she'll actually tolerate us even being in the property where she is, because to her that's where she is with carers, and we would have her at home."

Work to extend capacity at The Orchard is under way and is scheduled to take about nine months.

Iain said he "was not confident" that timescale would be met.

"We all have our moments of being OK and then being less OK," Iain said.

Sophie is among 26 children and young people with complex needs in the Highlands to be moved elsewhere due to a lack of residential capacity.

A freedom of information request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service found others had been placed in in care facilities in East Dunbartonshire, Fife, North Lanarkshire, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Stirling and West Lothian.

According to the data, the cost of these placements totalled over £7.4m, with an average annual cost of £166,427 per child.

A spokesperson for Highland Council has said it was unable to comment on individual cases but that it "recognised the impact of out-of-authority placements" on both children and their parents and carers.

The local authority said plans to increase capacity at The Orchard were on a "realistic timescale" as part of a wider five-year strategy.

They added: "This strategy is in recognition of the scale of the project, which includes developments in kinship, fostering, residential and short-break/respite care coupled with early intervention and prevention initiatives to support more children remaining living at home with parents/carers".

The issue was raised during First Minister's Questions by Highlands and Islands MSP Morven-May MacCallum at the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.

John Swinney said children and young people requiring specific types of care should be "supported as close to home as possible".

The first minister added: "Whilst there may be a number of children and young people in the Highlands who require that support, there may not be provision in that individual locality which is one of the reasons why we have to undertake some of the more regional work that is necessary to ensure we have provision that better meets the needs of young people."

Story by local democracy reporter Olivia Andrews.