Briefing for MPs: Budget 2018
Key messages
- Children and young people have been ignored in successive budgets.
- The services and support that children and young people rely on are now at breaking point.
- The Prime Minister has announced ‘austerity is over’. If this is the case, then children and young people should be the first group that the Government invests in.
- Social workers say that finances available to children’s services affect their decisions about whether or not to step in to provide support for children and families.
- It is unacceptable that children’s safety is potentially being undermined by a lack of sufficient resources.
- Early help services are facing particular pressures, with demand rising and funding being reduced.
Key Questions for the Chancellor
- What is the chancellor’s assessment of the impact of this budget on children and young people? Does he know how much we are investing in the younger generation overall?
- Will the chancellor work with representatives from the children’s sector to ensure that that children and young people can be placed at the heart of the upcoming spending review?
- What assurances can the chancellor give about the adequacy of funding for children’s social care? How has rising demand for children’s social care services been taken into account in his decisions?
- What conversations has he had with colleagues across local and national government about how investment in early intervention can be shored up?
- What advice would the chancellor give to those lead members for children’s services who say they do not have adequate resource to meet their statutory duties?