Can the Children’s Social Care Review ignore poverty, austerity and cuts to services?

However, in a very short report and blog it does little more than gently touch upon a range of thoughtful responses to much debated weighty issues, including family help, child protection and support, kinship care, keeping teenagers safe, building lifelong loving relationships with young people in care, residential care, direct work with children and families, multi-agency work, and; inspections.

The Review’s response to the feedback on ‘poverty, austerity and cuts to services’, is very concerning. In his blog, Josh MacAlister comments ‘‘some wanted the review to be more directly critical of the government for spending cuts and rising poverty or to attribute worsening outcomes in children’s social care to these factors…even if the review did have the broader welfare system in its scope (we don’t) there would still be problems in children’s social care that need addressing’’

At the heart of the crisis in children’s social care is the growing gap between rising demand and the current funding and level of services, these are the two essential foundations stones for transforming children’s services. Far from distancing itself from the ‘broader welfare system’, the Review will have to work closely with Government to bring about change.

First, the rising demand for children’s services is strongly associated with inequality. Currently, 4.3 million children in the UK are living in poverty in areas of high social deprivation. In England more than one in three children in families with a child under five live in poverty. This has a very damaging impact on their development, including their physical and mental health, education and well-being, and has a causal association with children coming into care. In poor neighbourhoods, teenagers are more likely to be involved in gangs, drug use, and ‘county lines’ trafficking.

In this context, amplified by the pandemic, it is clear that a Review which is limited to children’s social care cannot reduce the demand for services. Laying the first foundation stone will require a Government commitment to reduce poverty and create a more equal society - through progressive income tax, wealth tax reform, increases in the level of the minimum wage and universal credit, as well as economic and social investment to ‘level up’ in areas of high social deprivation.

‘The Case For Change: your feedback’ comments ‘‘child welfare inequalities must be understood, accounted and addressed’’. Yet, there is extensive evidence, not discussed in the ‘feedback’, showing the negative impact of inequalities on health, education, well-being and building functioning communities, to support the development of children within families and neighbourhoods (see, for example, Changing patterns of poverty in childhood, Nuffield Report (2021); the Marmot Review, Health Equity in England, 10 years on (2020), and; The Inner Level (2018) Kate Pickett & Richard Wilkinson)

The second foundation stone will require the introduction of needs-led funding for local authority services, not least to protect them in the future against draconian cuts. From 2010 -11 this has amounted to £2.2 billion, including 46% cuts in the ‘early help’ budget, and 70% cuts in youth services. These cuts have devastated children’s and youth services, and in the context of rising demand created the current crisis.

Changes to funding should also include the end of exploitative privatised provision. It is estimated that £200m profit each year is going from children’s services into the pockets of international venture capitalists. A consequence of this is the extensive use of poor quality unregulated accommodation, no longer legally required to provide ‘care’ for 16 and 17 year olds (as highlighted in Article 39’s campaign led by Carolyne Willow reported in Children and Young People Now) and contributing to the estrangement of many vulnerable teenagers from their families and communities.

If this Review is to meet its goal of succeeding where others have failed they will have to gain the Government’s commitment to laying these two essential foundation stones, or it is very unlikely that any recommendations it is considering, however worthwhile in themselves, will result in the radical changes promised to transform children’s social care.

Professor Mike Stein is from the University of York and has been researching the care system for 40 years