Vulnerable young people being failed at a cost of £23bn a year, MPs warn

Vulnerable young people are being failed at a cost of £23 billion a year, MPs have warned, as they called on the Government to report annually for the first time on progress being made in improving the lives of adolescents.

There are “unacceptably and unnecessarily high” social and personal costs of adverse outcomes for youths, including physical or mental harm, entering the care system or criminal justice system and not being in school, the Public Accounts Committee said.

Its chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier (pictured) demanded that evidence must be provided of better outcomes for young people who have overlapping or complex problems, warning there is “no number that can be put on a child dying because of a failure to co-ordinate across so-called safeguarding services”.

In a report published on Wednesday, the committee estimated that the estimated lifetime social cost of adverse outcomes for all children who have ever needed a social worker is £23 billion a year.

MPs said young people in difficult circumstances are faced with a “maze of support” and observed a “puzzling reluctance across Whitehall to provide any strategic leadership” on the issues.

The committee described a “fragmented ownership between departments of the problems facing those vulnerable adolescents with complex and overlapping needs”.

MPs demanded joined-up, strategic thinking within Government and between central and local government, warning that unless this change is made “costs will remain unnecessarily high”.

There are examples of good and effective locally provided support for vulnerable adolescents, the committee said, but they highlighted the fact that certain groups are disproportionately likely to experience adverse outcomes.

They said there is a “concerning lack of understanding about particular issues”, including why so many girls are seeking support for mental health issues.

The committee said the proportion of adolescent girls known to be in contact with secondary mental health services is much greater than for boys, at 18% of 16-year-old-girls compared to 11% for boys.

MPs also accused the Ministry of Justice and Home Office of seeming to “lack curiosity about the increase in the proportion of children from ethnic minority background in youth custody and appear to have no current plan to address the situation”.

They said that although the number of children in youth custody across all ethnicities has reduced by almost three quarters (73%) from 2010–11 to 2020–21, the proportion from ethnic minority backgrounds has risen from just under a third to more than half (32% to 53%).

Among its recommendations, the committee called on both the Ministry of Justice and Home Office to report back within six months “on what they understand about ‘what works’, and what action they will take to understand why ethnic minority children make up over half of all children in custody”.

The committee urged the Government to set out within six months the measures it will use to track whether outcomes for vulnerable adolescents are improving and thereafter to produce an annual report on progress.

Dame Meg said: “The Department for Education tells us that it holds the ring across Government on supporting and protecting adolescents, but in the same breath had to say it hadn’t even started work on the harms from social media.

“Young people from ethnic minority backgrounds are grossly overrepresented in the youth justice system, a problem that’s been obvious and growing for a decade, but there’s no sign of action or even special attention to the issue.

“It’s hard to escape the feeling that our young people, especially the ones who were already vulnerable and at risk, are being treated as an afterthought.

“Too often they fall through the cracks of different services and are left to fend for themselves. The financial cost of these failures is already a bank-breaking £23 billion a year. Is the Government prepared to fund what that will grow to, when the problems it’s failing to tackle now come home to roost?

“And there is no number that can be put on a child dying because of a failure to co-ordinate across so-called safeguarding services.

“After this report, we expect Government to produce an annual update on how it’s improving outcomes for adolescents. Not the plans and programmes it’s making – we want to see the evidence of better outcomes, every year.”

The Local Government Association (LGA) said there must be “far better join-up across Government, working with councils, to support vulnerable adolescents” and called for better funding.

Louise Gittins, chairwoman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said: “The Government can take immediate action to improve support for vulnerable adolescents by ensuring that children’s services, children’s mental health and youth justice services receive the funding they need to not only meet urgent need, but to make sure young people get the support they need, as soon as they need it.”

A Government spokesperson said: “We are working urgently across Government and with local authorities to ensure that all vulnerable children, no matter their age or circumstances, are kept safe and receive the support they need.

“This work is backed by £4.8 billion up to 2025 to deliver key children’s services, alongside our newly announced reform of children’s social care, which includes delivering stronger multi-agency support, more help for care leavers, and improvements at a local authority level to ensure that all children have access to loving, stable homes.

“We are also investing millions in youth justice services, including in projects across the country to intervene much earlier in young people’s lives, protecting those most at risk of exploitation or violence, and are providing an additional £2.3 billion per year to mental health services by 2024, which will reach up to 345,000 more children and young people.”

Copyright (c) PA Media Ltd. 2023, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Jessica Taylor / House Of Commons / PA.