The Children’s Charities Coalition is urging 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.
New research by Pro Bono Economics (PBE) for Action for Children, Barnardo’s, The Children’s Society, National Children’s Bureau and the NSPCC reveals that, despite a small rise in the last three years, council spending on early intervention services has fallen by more than £2billion since 2010/11 - an overall drop of 42%.
Worryingly, 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.
One local authority Head of Service interviewed for the research said:
“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. 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.
Another local authority head of service said:
“Things like children coming into care… are reaching crisis point where there's too much demand. 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.
To make a clean break from the last 14 years, 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.
This is in line with the recommendations made in Josh MacAlister’s Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, published in 2022.
In addition to overall investment at a national level, targeted funding to the areas with the highest need must be prioritised.
Multi-year funding cycles will allow local authorities to front-load investment in prevention and support a strong and flexible network of community and voluntary sector provision.
Increased and targeted funding must be coupled with effective ways of monitoring and evaluating the provision and effectiveness of early intervention services at a local and national level, to ensure that this is not reduced, and that children and families get the support they need.
This would also help to provide a comprehensive picture both of families’ needs and of the effectiveness and sufficiency of universal and community based early help services.
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.”
Anna Feuchtwang
Chief Executive, National Children's Bureau
Pro Bono Economics’ independent analysis of local government spending on early intervention children’s services shines a much-needed light on the scale and distribution of cuts over the last decade and a half.
While it's clear that things are no longer getting worse, it is also evident that there is a long way to go before we can say things have got decisively better. Significant shifts in central government policy in recent years have contributed to this change.
But any emerging recovery risks being blown off course by a failure to support a much-needed overhaul of children’s services with sufficient and patient long-term investment in early intervention services.
Jack Larkham
Senior Policy Analyst at Pro Bono Economics and report author
The urgent need for major reform and investment in children’s services is reflected in a range of alarming metrics for children.
Child poverty in England remains at record levels of around 3.8 million (from DWP) while the mental health and wellbeing of children is in sharp decline.
In addition, the number of children living in temporary accommodation hit an all-time high in 2024 of more than 160,000, which is more than double (139%) what it was in 2011, and despite a slight fall in 2024, the number of children in care remains almost 40% higher (more than 83,000) than it was 20 years ago.
About the Children’s Charities Coalition:
The Children’s Charities Coalition is a partnership of prominent UK children’s charities: Action for Children, Barnardo’s, The Children’s Society, National Children’s Bureau and NSPCC.
About Pro Bono Economics
PBE is a think tank that uses economic analysis and the unique insight provided by our connection to the social sector to help charities, funders, firms and policymakers to collectively tackle the causes and consequences of low personal wellbeing in the UK. We do this in order to end low personal wellbeing in the United Kingdom. Experts and economists at PBE work on a wide range of issues related to low wellbeing, including mental health, education, employment, financial security, poverty, disability, inequality, volunteering and civil society. PBE works closely with the economics profession to achieve its aims, building relationships between 500 economist volunteers and charities over the last 14 years.