Urgent funding needed for children’s services

CHILDREN’S SERVICES must receive urgent funding if vulnerable youngsters in England’s poorest areas are to receive help during the coronavirus pandemic, five charities have said.

Local authorities’ services were experiencing a funding crisis before the outbreak, which may push them to “breaking point”, the Children’s Sector

Funding Alliance ( CSFA) has warned.

The “need, and poor financial situation, of these authorities is likely to continue to deteriorate”, they warned.

The CSFA, which includes Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, the National Children’s Bureau and the NSPCC shared their analysis with the Treasury.

They are calling for Chancellor

Rishi Sunak to provide more longer term funding that will level up communities by being distributed according to need, and help councils intervene earlier when families need help.

Local authorities were operating with £ 2.2bn less funding for children in 2018- 19 compared with 2010- 11, according to previous CSFA estimates based on Government data.

And budgets have increasingly been spent on services they are obliged to deliver, such as safeguarding and children in care, they say.

Spending in these areas is estimated to have risen 29 per cent since 2010- 11.

But the charities said these interventions are not improving outcomes for children, with some local authorities connecting a rise in child protection plans to a lack of early intervention work to prevent problems escalating.

The charities also said local authorities covering the most deprived areas have seen more than twice the size of cut to funding as the least deprived parts.

These are areas which tend to have high levels of unemployment and free school meal eligibility and are most likely to be vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic.