CYP Now - Health bill and budget cuts imperil vulnerable children

I have been grappling with the potential consequences of last month's Budget, and of the Health and Social Care Bill, for children who are vulnerable. Children's success or failure relies on how well adults - those close to the child and those working in services for them - bring up, educate and care for them.

We know that children’s lives that are well supported and financially comfortable may be relatively unaffected by changes in public services policy and funding. Vulnerable and less well-supported children rely more on the ability of services to work as children’s champions. The Chancellor told us in the Budget that for the foreseeable future, services and champions alike will continue to be squeezed. Given this forecast, we can predict that the gaps in life chances already so evident between different groups of children in England will continue to grow.

Let’s look at some practical – albeit fictionalised – examples of what could happen in some lives in light of the Budget and the act. I could of course have described any number of different examples, but here are two.

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