NCAS conference: ADCS president urges investment to reduce care numbers

Dave Hill, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, said there are now around 71,000 children in care - a rise on last year, continuing the upward trend of recent years, adding that it will be difficult to improve support for them if the upward trend continues.

"As corporate parents, I think that local government should lead the debate about taking fewer children into care and doing even better for those children that we do take into care," Hill said at the National Children and Adult Services (NCAS) conference in Manchester.

"We have got to change the shape of children's social care, not through the lens of government's touching faith in structural reform, but by investing in prevention and early help."

Latest government figures, published last month, show that local government spending on early intervention is dropping, while spending is continuing to rise on child protection services and provision for looked-after children.

Local authorities in England are planning to spend a total of £674m on children's centres and associated early years provision over the current 2016/17 financial year - £90m less than the £764m spent in 2015/16.

However, spending on looked-after children is predicted to rise from £3.25bn in 2015/16 to £3.41bn in 2016/17 - a rise of £151.7m, or 4.7 per cent.

Hill said that in order to manage the shift in a "safe" way, significant investment is necessary.

"For a while of course, maybe two to three years, you have to double invest money into early help, and money into statutory child protection work, but eventually, the balance can begin to shift," he said.

"Fewer children in care results in more manageable caseloads for social workers, meaning they are better able to achieve continuity in case holding, form meaningful relationships with children and families, and thereby make more meaningful, lasting interventions in the lives of children, young people and their families.

"Many of those interventions can then be predicated upon breaking the cycle of adult disadvantage, of improving the ability of adults to care effectively for their children, thus preventing some from coming into care."