Amid ongoing concerns about the impact of austerity on children's services, Chancellor Philip Hammond used the recent Budget to allocate additional money to cash-strapped councils.
A total of £84m will be used to extend three successful children's social care pilot projects to more councils over the next year. A further £410m will be shared between adult services, and children's services in 2019/20. But children's services leaders have warned that it is nowhere near enough to plug the gaps, pointing to massive increases in demand in recent years. Latest Department for Education statistics show that 75,420 children were in care at 31 March 2018, up from 72,590 in 2017 - an increase of 3.9 per cent in the space of 12 months.
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