The extra funding for local authority children and family services for 2020/21 in the one-year Spending Round is the biggest year-on-year increase in spending power for a decade.
The recent announcement by Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid will see Whitehall departments get an additional £13.4bn, of which £3.5bn will to given to local government.
Looking beyond the headline figures, CYP Now analyses which sectors are to receive funding, how it will be used and what the reaction has been of leading sector organisations.
EARLY YEARS
- £66m to increase the hourly rate paid to early years providers through the government's funded childcare offers.
The Early Years Alliance called the amount of additional funding as "tokenistic" in the context of a £600m funding shortfall across the sector.
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Alliance, says: "The funding announcement was not the serious response to the early years funding crisis the sector had a right to expect.
"In fact, it will be less than nothing to those providers who have endured real-terms cuts to funding levels in recent years and will anyway be completely meaningless once next April's minimum wage increase kicks in."
EDUCATION
- Schools budget to increase by £2.6bn in 2020/21, £4.8bn in 2021/22 and £7.1bn in 2022/23. This will see the minimum per pupil spend rise to £3,750 for primary schools and £5,000 for secondary schools.
- Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) budget to rise by £700m in 2020/21.
- Additional £400m in further education including £190m to increase core funding for 16- to 19-year-olds at a faster rate than core schools funding.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, says: "We were asking for a £12.6bn annual increase in school budgets by 2022/23. The government has only pledged £9bn. This will not be sufficient to reverse all the cuts to date and the government is clearly seeking to favour some schools more than others."
The Association of Directors of Children's Services says: "We welcome confirmation of an 11 per cent uplift in funding to support learners with SEND in 2020/21 - £700m is a lot of money, but by itself it will not address the systemic challenges we now face in the delivery of our statutory duties, particularly in relation to 19- to 25-year-olds requiring education, health and care plans."
The Association of Colleges welcomed the extra funding for 16-19 learning, but warned it would not go far enough. "Colleges are in a different place on budgets and funding to schools," it states. "Whereas government took decisions to increase the overall schools budget and school funding per pupil, the college budget has been squeezed hard.
"So whereas the announcement on school funding is effectively an acceleration of existing increases, the college announcement is like a kick-start to a stalled car."
HEALTH
- Spending will increase by 3.1 per cent in real terms, giving the NHS a cash increase of £33.9bn a year by 2023/24 compared to 2018/19 budgets.
- Settlement includes a 3.4 per cent increase in the Health Education England budget including £150m more for training, and a £1,000 central training budget for each nurse, midwife and allied health professional over three years.
Analysis of the spending figures by health think-tank the King's Fund pointed out that the amount given to councils to spend on prevention is set to grow slower than other parts of the NHS budget.
Writing on its website, director of policy Sally Warren says: "It's disappointing that the least generous aspect of the health and care settlement is the public health grant - the part of the system most focused on prevention and one of the Secretary of State's top priorities. The public health grant will remain ringfenced for at least next year and will receive a small, unspecified increase - but less than any other part of the health and care service. The evidence base for action on prevention is clear, so this decision is short-sighted and out of step with the ambition for the NHS long-term plan."
SOCIAL CARE
- An extra £1bn for councils to spend on children and adults social care.
- Possible £500m precept for adults social care
- An additional £30m to safeguard children from child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The British Association of Social Workers says: "It is concerning that there is no specific mention of addressing the massive hole in public sector funding for children's services."
National Children's Bureau says it wants confirmation of how much of the new social care money would be targeted at vulnerable children and what will be spent elsewhere.
It says: "The announcement says nothing about uprating benefits or tackling the housing crisis, which are significant factors in the poverty blighting the lives of over four million UK children. After a decade of austerity, we still need a wider commitment from government to address the withering inequality that leaves many families relying on food banks to get by."
YOUTH JUSTICE
- An extra £750m for policing to begin delivery of the government's commitment to recruit 20,000 additional police officers by 2023.
- Commitment to funding the Troubled Families Programme.
Sam Royston, director of policy and research at The Children's Society, says: "Children are facing shocking levels of poverty and unhappiness, and serious risks including exploitation, knife crime and mental ill-health, but these announcements do not go nearly far enough in ensuring public services are equipped to prevent and tackle these issues."
YOUTH WORK
- Pledge to create a new Youth Investment Fund to build and refurbish youth centres and deliver services for young people.
UK Youth chief executive Anna Smee says the announcement of the fund was the start of recognising the value that youth services and youth workers adds to communities. "There is a generation of young people that don't believe this country is there for them," she says. "By working together, we have been able to get the message heard loud and clear: long-term investment into youth services is vital for a brighter future for all young people."
However, ChooseYouth felt less enamoured by the announcement. "Spending plans announced by Sajid Javid do not go far enough and will not reverse the devastating cuts to youth services waged during nine years of austerity," it tweeted.
Javid said the Spending Round signalled the end of austerity. But the reaction to the extra funding from leaders across the children and families sector suggests significantly more money will need to be found in the three-year Spending Review in 2020, aligned with more fundamental reforms to how children's services work (see expert view).
- Spending Round 2019 from www.gov.uk/government/publications/spending-round-2019-document
EXPERT VIEW
Give communities power to protect children early
By Pawda Tjoa, senior policy researcher, New Local Government Network
More than one in five children in England are referred to children's services before the age of five, but three-quarters of children in this position did not receive early help services. Children's services teams are aware of the importance of early help, but the unprecedented demand for children's services means they are constantly fire-fighting, with already limited resources being diverted from preventative services to meet more urgent, acute needs.
In the 2019 Spending Round, the Chancellor declared the end of austerity, and committed £1.5bn to local government to ease the demand pressure on social care. But this will do little to curb demand in the long term, unless it is combined with a shift to prevention and early intervention.
In our report From Tiny Acorns: Communities Shaping the Future of Shildren's Services, we argue for a new approach to tackling the dual challenge of funding constraints and rising demand through the involvement of the community. The role of the community and its capacity to contribute is often undervalued, but if we are to address the challenges facing children's services in the long term, this needs to change.
The report sets out a number of recommendations as the first steps in shifting the focus of children's services to prevention, with the community at the helm. Here are our top three:
- A new inspection framework should replace Ofsted's current framework. This should engage the community at key stages to capture local circumstances. The current framework is rigid and leads to evaluations that do not respond to local conditions - for example, Ofsted does not consider the cost required to achieve a decent rating. A new approach would draw from local examples including Doncaster's Children's Services Trust, where care leavers are engaged as its young advisers who actively shape the service's culture and values.
- Promote asset-based approaches to care through community-led engagements. There is growing awareness of the importance of asset-based approaches to care, which seek to tap into the skills and experiences of children and families. However, the application of this in practice is still patchy. Councils like Camden have reported improved outcomes as they actively focus on building strong relationships and seek to learn from the lived experience of families going through difficult care proceedings.
- Build accountability and capability through community commissioning. In response to funding challenges, councils are exploring alternative delivery methods, including closer collaboration with the voluntary sector and community groups. To be effective, these partnerships need to be on an equal footing, with spending power handed over to the community. For example, in Leeds the council has transferred funds to "community teams" set up to identify local needs and then commission preventative services most useful to their area.
The annual cost of late intervention is £17bn, with thousands of children at serious risk of abuse, substance misuse and gang involvement later in life. It is worth investing early to make sure children and families do not reach a point of crisis in the first place. The future of children's services must be focused on strengthening preventative services and we must do so by working with local communities, ensuring the people and places who shape a child are central to our work, not an afterthought.
- Tiny Acorns: Communities Shaping the Future of Children's Services, from www.nlgn.org.uk
