Stopping children going off the rails ‘will save £1.7bn a year’
Staging early interventions to stop young people going off the rails and getting into serious difficulties could save £1.7bn a year, a coalition of more than 50 leading charities say today.
The next government should set up a ring-fenced fund to tackle social problems early and stop young people’s lives being ruined by mental health problems, bad parenting and antisocial behaviour, the campaigners argue.
The charities – including Barnardo’s, NSPCC, Action for Children, Women’s Aid and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations – say that a failure to intervene in social problems at an early stage creates crises which are much more expensive to solve in the long run.
They estimate that failure to intervene early in social problems is costing £17bn a year – a 10th of which could be saved by establishing an early intervention investment fund.
Such a fund would award money over the life of the next Parliament to councils, schools, healthcare providers and other groups which could prove they had ambitious early intervention plans.
“A new government will need to find funds urgently to address these issues,” they write in the letter published on independent.co.uk today. “It also has a moral duty to do more than just pick up the pieces only when things go wrong.
“If families and children are supported earlier, fewer children will need to be taken into care, be excluded from school, develop mental health problems or commit crimes. We must support them from the earliest stage to nurture the skills they need to cope with life’s challenges and flourish. We must transform these children’s lives before it is too late.”
Whoever forms the government after Thursday’s general election must also start measuring how much is already being spent on early intervention. This is not measured at the moment, making it difficult to shift resources, they argue.
Analysis by the Early Intervention Foundation has assessed the effectiveness of existing programmes and aims to encourage more councils and groups to adopt successful schemes. Those judged to be successful include Multisystemic Therapy (MST), which has been found to improve the functioning of problem families, reduce youth offending and cut the number of young people being taken into council care.
Under the programme, therapists provide individual and family therapy to troubled youngsters aged 12 to 17 and their parents over four to six months.
Another scheme is Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (Paths), a schoolbased programme which has been found to reduce children’s aggressive behaviour in the classroom through a specific curriculum of activities.
Carey Oppenheim, EIF’s chief executive, said: “Taking action as soon as possible to tackle problems for children, young people and their families before they become more difficult to reverse is more crucial than ever.
“Our organisations are uniting to send a powerful message to whoever forms the new government. Prioritising and investing in early intervention will not only save money but will give a generation of children, young people and their families the best chance of thriving.”