Children's social care in England Briefing - House of Commons, 9 October 2018

Councils have worked hard to protect budgets for essential child protection services, but funding pressures have led to difficult decisions elsewhere, increasingly leaving children and young people unable to access support until they reach crisis point.

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Key messages

  • Making sure all children and young people have the bright future they deserve is a key ambition of every council. Councils want all young people to be able to enjoy their lives, reach their full potential and make a good transition to adulthood with good health and wellbeing.
  • The positive work of councils in helping our children and young people have the best start in life has been illustrated by the latest Ofsted data on children’s social care which shows that, in 2017/18, the proportion of council children’s services rated good or outstanding has increased.
  • Councils have worked tirelessly to protect support for vulnerable children, and have increased their spending on children’s social care by almost 10 per cent over the past four years to a record £8.8 billion in 2017/18.
  • Spending on children’s social care has increased at a faster rate than any other area of council business. All areas except adult social care have seen a reduction in spending, yet councils had to spend £816 million more than they had budgeted for children’s social care during the last year alone. This underlines the urgent need for a sustainable funding solution to be found.
  • Although local authority spending on children’s social care has risen, it has not kept pace with growing demand. Children entered care at a rate of 90 a day last year, and a child is now referred to children’s services every 49 seconds.
  • The increase in demand for immediate child protection support has left councils struggling to continue funding vital early intervention services that can help to reduce this pressure in the longer term. This problem has been exacerbated by ongoing cuts to the government’s Early Intervention Grant, which has been reduced by almost £600 million since 2013 and is projected to decrease by almost £100 million more by 2020.
  • The funding gap facing councils’ children’s services will reach £3 billion by 2025. We are calling for this to be plugged and the cuts to early intervention funding to be reversed. This will help councils continue to deliver high quality services for their residents.