Council spending on early help falls by more than £2 billion since 2011

New research reveals that, despite a small rise in the last three years, council spending on early intervention services has fallen by more than £2 billion since 2010/11 – an overall drop of 42%.

The research was carried out by Pro Bono Economics on behalf of a coalition of children’s charities including Action for Children, Barnardo’s, The Children’s Society, National Children’s Bureau and the NSPCC. It finds that at the same time as a drop in early intervention spending, councils have seen a massive increase in spending on children in residential care, rising to an all-time high of £3 billion.

They say 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%).

In real terms this means reductions in the most deprived areas of more than half a billion pounds, compared to less than £200 million in the least deprived.

Services for young people have borne the brunt during this period, contributing to the closure of as many as 1,000 children’s centres and 750 youth centres across England.

“When I first came into the local authority we had a youth service of about 55 full-time staff, and an army of seasonal staff,” One local authority Head of Service interviewed for the research said. “We had great youth provision, daytime, evenings and weekends. The funding for that service has been stripped out. So now we have no youth workers at all, zero.”

At the same time, local authority spending on residential care placements has continued to balloon, rising by another £600 million (cash increase) in the past year to a total of £3billion.

Based on the new research, the Children’s Charities Coalition believes councils remain locked in a financial downward spiral, with a shortage of early intervention services leading to increasing numbers of children and families reaching crisis point and needing more expensive, statutory, late intervention services.

“Things like children coming into care… are reaching crisis point where there's too much demand,” another Head of Service said. “And when you think about why there's too much demand, it's because for the last 10-15 years, the prevention services haven't been there.”

The Coalition has warmly welcomed the recent £270 million funding boost for early intervention services provided by new grants for local authorities through the Families First Programme. However, even with this short-term increase, spending will continue to fall behind, particularly in deprived areas.

The five children’s charities are calling on the Chancellor to use the upcoming Spending Review to make a further long-term commitment of a minimum of £2.6 billion to increase funding for children’s social care, in line with the recommendations made in Josh MacAlister’s Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, published in 2022.

Anna Feuchtwang, CEO of the National Children’s Bureau, said 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.”

“The Government has seemingly recognised the nature of the problem but are yet to commit fully to delivering the financial solution that would be transformative to the lives of so many children across England.

“The Chancellor has the opportunity in her Comprehensive Review to break this destructive cycle once and for all and make the four-year, £2.6 billion investment in children’s social care that was identified as desperately required in Josh MacAlister’s Independent Review.”