Children’s Charities Coalition urges government to boost funding in children’s social care

The Children’s Charities Coalition has urged the Chancellor to turbocharge long-term investment in children’s social care to enable local authorities to rebuild early intervention services, preventing more children and families reaching crisis point.

The Coalition, which includes Action for Children, Barnardo’s, The Children’s Society, National Children’s Bureau and the NSPCC has released new research showing that council spending on early intervention services has fallen by more than £2billion since 2010/11 – representing an overall drop of 42%.

The survey shows that this has disproportionately impacted the most deprived parts of the country, where spending per child has fallen by more than 50%. In contrast, the least deprived areas saw a drop of less than one-third (30%).

Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive, National Children's Bureau commented “Local authorities remain locked in a doom spiral of spending far too little on early intervention services and then having to pay out far too much to help children and families when they reach crisis point.

Shockingly, it is children in the most deprived part of the country that are suffering the most, with funding for early intervention services dropping my more than a half since 2010.

The Government has recognised the nature of the problem, but the £270 million of new money they have invested so far must be backed a longer-term financial settlement for local government that would transform the lives of so many children across England.

The Chancellor has the opportunity in her Spending Review to break this destructive cycle once and for all.”

The full report can be found here.