Children’s services at breaking point, warn MPs

Ahead of the 2019 Spending Review, a new report has warned that constricted funding and increasing demand have left children’s services in England at breaking point.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has called for a funding settlement that reflects the challenges local authorities face in delivering children’s social care, and recommends a minimum increase to core grant funding of £3.1 billion up until 2025. Any increase in funding must also ‘go hand-in-hand with systemic change’ if local authority children’s services are to be sustainable in the long-term.

High turnover and low retention of the children’s social care workforce also point to a system that isn’t working well. The committee suggests that the government should increase core funding in order to enable local authorities to ease the pressure facing social workers. It should better understand why social workers are leaving their roles and consider options for lessening the load on this vital workforce as a matter of urgency.  

Clive Betts, chair of the committee, said: “Supporting vulnerable children is one of the most important duties that local authorities provide. It is vital that we have the right support available in every part of the country, to ensure that vulnerable children get the support they need. Over the last decade we have seen a steady increase in the number of children needing support, whilst at the same time funding has failed to keep up.

“It is clear that this approach cannot be sustained, and the government must make serious financial and systemic changes to support local authorities in helping vulnerable children. They must understand why demand is increasing and whether it can be reduced. They must ensure that the funding formula actually allows local authorities to meet the obligations for supporting children that the government places on them. We have reached a crisis point and action is needed now.”

Anntoinette Bramble, Chair of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, commented: “Children’s services are at a tipping point as a result of increasingly high levels of demand for support and cuts in central government funding. The fact that nine in 10 councils overspent their budgets on children’s social care in 2017/18 indicates the huge financial pressures councils all over the country are under to support vulnerable children and young people.
 
“Councils have also played a pivotal role in making the Troubled Families Programme a success for some of the most vulnerable families, and it is good that the committee supports the need to continue this vital service through a successor programme.”

Simon Edwards, director of the County Councils Network, said of the report: “This cross-party report is the latest in a long line of persuasive pieces of evidence demonstrating that huge increases in demand for children’s services at a time of significant funding reductions is creating an unsustainable system. We welcome the committee’s calls for substantial extra resource for children’s services, echoing the County Councils Network’s own advocacy.
 
"Over the last twelve years, the number of referrals to children’s services in county areas has risen from 121,000 a year to 250,000 per year in 2018 – a 106 per cent increase. Counties overspent on their children’ services by £264 million last year and a third of the country’s entire children in care are looked after in county areas. As we warned in our response to the inquiry, if no extra funding is made available to councils in this year’s Spending Review, a growing number of our councils will only be able to provide the basic core services in future. Alongside funding, the government should seek to continue its Troubled Families Programme. In a difficult financial climate, this programme has worked well in focusing resources and personnel onto preventative measures to help ensure every child has the best start in life from an early age.”