However, as Paul Ennals, chief executive of the National Children'sBureau has pointed out, there is more at risk than the immediatefrontline services facing cuts, serious though that is.
One is the longer-term effect of cutting preventative services. Thingslike sexual health or school nursing might seem easy options now, buttaxpayers will have to pay the cost of things like higher teenagepregnancy, obesity and poor mental health in later years. And ministerswill reap the political cost.
In some cases, primary care trusts seem to assume local authorities willpick up the cost of child and adolescent mental health and preventativeservices. Such cynicism jeopardises the fragile working relationshipthat has developed relatively recently between local authorities andhealth bodies. It is the very joint working that is intended to save theNHS money by preventing illness or helping people well before they startto need high-end, high-cost acute services, that it is now under thegreatest pressure.
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