The Children’s Commissioner’s report highlights the complexity of issues facing young people and their families.
Key messages
- The Children’s Commissioner’s report highlights the complexity of issues facing young people and their families. It demonstrates the importance of all agencies at local and national level working together to consider how their policies and practice will impact on children and young people.
- Councils aim to help struggling families at an early stage, before issues become serious. Over the past decade, the number of children on child protection plans has increased by 83 per cent, compared to an increase of 21 per cent in the number of children in care.
- Keeping children safe and well is one of the most important jobs that councils do, but our children’s services are under increasing pressure. Facing a £2 billion funding gap by 2020, demand for these services has also increased dramatically. More than 500 child protection investigations took place every day last year, compared to 200 a decade ago. On average, 90 children entered care every day last year, which also saw the largest annual increase in care numbers since 2010.
- Councils have worked hard to protect budgets for essential child protection services, but funding pressures have led to difficult decisions elsewhere, often leaving children and young people unable to access support until they reach crisis point. Government funding for the Early Intervention Grant has been cut by almost £500 million since 2013. It is projected to drop by a further £183 million by 2020.
- Measures to tackle the crisis in children and young people’s mental health are long overdue and we are pleased the Government is taking steps to address this through the children’s mental health Green Paper. All children need to be able to access support quickly and easily when they need it.