City Council Forced To Divert Cash To Social Work

Dundee City Council has confirmed that it is forced to divert cash from other council budgets to the social work department to ensure young lives are not put at risk.

An ongoing funding shortfall from the Scottish Executive means the council regularly has to raid other budgets to prevent the possibility of vulnerable children being denied access to social work services in the city.

The confirmation comes after Scotland’s leading social worker, David Crawford, president of the Association of Directors of Social Work in Scotland, claimed that young lives were being endangered because of cash shortages for social workers.

A spokesman for the city council said cash for vulnerable children, whether they were being taken into care or placed under supervision, would always be made available from the council’s budget, and pointed out that it was nothing new, nor unique to Dundee.

He said, “The city council is working hard to ensure adequate resources are there for children’s services. We are currently spending more than our grant-aided expenditure in this area, which is very much demand-led. This is not unique to Dundee City Council and it’s an issue, through Cosla, that local authorities have raised with the Scottish Executive.”

No official figures were available on how much money was transferred last year from other council budgets to the social work department, or which departments were affected.

However, Mr Crawford’s warning came after it emerged that local authorities had transferred an estimated £150 million last year to cope with the rapidly-rising number of youngsters deemed at risk due to their families’ drug abuse.

Mr Crawford said the current gap between the cost of child social work across Scotland and the Executive funding was put at more than £160 million, while the number of children in care, under supervision or on the child protection register is rising year on year.

He said councils dealt with the rising demand for child protection by diverting money from other priorities, often from older people’s services or learning disability, and described it as a universal problem.

Councils fear underfunding could lead to mistakes by overworked staff, like the case of baby Caleb Ness in 2000, who died after social workers sent him to live with his drug addict mother and brain-injured father, Alexander Ness, who killed him by violently shaking him.

Professor Arthur Midwinter, budget adviser to Holyrood’s finance committee, said in September he had detected a “worrying” gap in grant-aided expenditure in social work services. “It’s £160 million, 63% of GAE,” he said.