Children's centres and youth sector hit, but care services escape cuts

Children’s centres, youth services and youth offending teams are bearing the brunt of cutbacks, as local authorities opt to preserve child protection and care budgets, according to official statistics on council spending.

CYP Now analysis of local authority section 251 returns, published at the end of January, reveals that overall expenditure on children’s services dropped by seven per cent, from £9.24bn in 2010/11 to £8.6bn in 2011/12.

The figures lay bare the full impact of local authority spending decisions made during the first year of the coalition government.

Spending on looked-after children – which includes residential care, fostering and leaving care support services – remained almost static at £3bn.

Child protection budgets also remained static at £1.7bn, as did spending on family support, at about £870m each year.

Within these categories, expenditure on some areas of work actually increased quite significantly. For looked-after children, spending on fostering rose 6.4 per cent from £1,294m to £1,377m. In residential care, outlay rose 2.2 per cent from £1,028m to £1,051m.

The big drops came in youth services, down 26 per cent from £1.18bn to £877m; Sure Start children’s centres, down 21 per cent from £1.4bn to £1.1bn; and youth justice, down 18 per cent from £412m to £339m.

Andrew Webb, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, says the data confirms a shift from preventative to protective services.

“At a high level, the reductions are in the areas I would have expected, because people are trying to protect their frontline safeguarding services,” Webb says.

“It is also difficult to switch funding away from looked-after children services because the bulk of money in that area is spent on the day-to-day care of children.

“The big worry that these figures stir up is that the loss of preventative services in youth justice, Sure Start and services for young people will turn itself into a spending pressure in the looked-after children and safeguarding areas quite quickly.

“Second, given the settlement for this year and next year, local authorities are already taking decisions to reduce expenditure once again.”

Webb argues that the next financial year will see councils forced to extend cuts to services that have been sheltered thus far.

“I know from talking to colleagues that services are facing a second round of cuts,” he says. “It is inevitable that services will have to be cut because the overall settlement means that children’s services cannot be protected.”

Although the headline figures for England reveal the general spending trend, priorities within individual local authorities vary.

Using government comparison tools, CYP Now analysed spending decisions by two statistically similar groups of local authorities – one affluent and another more deprived.

Collectively, the more affluent areas – Surrey, Windsor and Maidenhead, Buckinghamshire, Bracknell Forest and Hertfordshire – recorded an overall drop in children’s services spending of 1.74 per cent – less than the seven per cent average.

This compares to a drop of 11.2 per cent for the group of more deprived areas – Barking and Dagenham, Nottingham, Sandwell, Greenwich and Southampton.
Despite such a small drop in the more affluent areas, youth justice suffered disproportionately – with cuts ranging from five to 32 per cent.

However, the more affluent localities were more likely to invest in Sure Start children’s centres, with three of the five authorities ploughing more money into the area. This contrasts starkly with the more deprived areas, where Sure Start spending dropped in each authority.

Helen Jenner, director of children’s services at Barking and Dagenham, says the authority tried to minimise cuts to children’s centres, while channelling funding into family support services.

“Barking and Dagenham has had to manage funding reductions, despite having the fastest growing child population in the country,” she says. 

“We have tried to prioritise family funding and children’s centres as part of supporting early intervention and the troubled families initiative.”