Cuts to children’s services like ‘Armageddon’

Vulnerable children at risk as services countrywide struggle with post-Baby P increase in referrals, and the coalition government’s 25% spending cuts

“Armageddon.” Not my words, or those of an irate opposition politician, but those reportedly used by Barnet council’s head of children’s services, Robert McCulloch-Graham, to describe the financial position faced by his department. It’s looking at cuts of up to 50% in grants, and up to 20% in its core budget over the next three years.

At the same time as its resources begin to dwindle rapidly, Barnet children’s services has been grappling with a doubling of demand – a 50 per cent increase in the number of referals to its children’s social care department in the past two years. This is what I call, in my Society Guardian piece today, the overheating post-Baby P economy of children’s services.

Barnet is not alone in the “armageddon” zone. Here’s Anthony May, director of children and young people’s services at Nottinghamshire county council, writing for the Nottingham Post:”We have seen a 56 per cent increase in referrals over the last year, an 83 per cent increase over the past two years in the number of children subject to child protection plans and a 24 per cent increase in the number of children coming into council care over the same period.”

Nottinghamshire said in February it was having to spend an extra £1.7m a year for the next three years on children’s safeguarding, at a time when the council needs to take £150m out of its budget over the next three years. That looks very much like child protection is one of the very few areas of council business to enjoy a spending increase.

What of Haringey, which is where the recent crisis in child protection originated? The council needs to make savings of £60m over three years. Yet its children and young people service is a big contributor to the council’s overall projected revenue £6m overspend as it struggles to cope with increasing numbers of referals, and children taken into care.

Other councils reportedly contemplating cuts to children’s services include: Birmingham (£13m, 1,500 jobs to go); Somerset county council (£17m); and Hampshire county council (£24m, 180 jobs)

So how do councils pull back from Armageddon and reshape services? Here’s McCulloch-Graham:”We will be doing much more targeted early intervention work, enabling families to support themselves and reducing the demand on the acute specialist and more expensive provision,” he said. “In order to achieve this, we will absorb the reduction of resources in our more universal and general services.”

Early intervention is the Holy Grail for child protection: getting to at risk families before they become fully-fledged and expensive “problems” requiring safeguarding intervention. The trick is how you invest in early intervention without divesting in crisis intervention.

Barnet says it will pay for it by taking money from its “universal and general services”: this is likely mean cuts to children’s homes, connexions careers advice and other youth projects.