"There have been lots of pleas for a special grant but we are not thatsympathetic," said Colin Green, divisional manager for child protectionat the Department for Education and Skills, at the National SocialServices Conference last week. "If your local partners can't givepriority to safeguarding what are we saying about its importance?"
But Andrew Webb, the co-chair of the Association of Directors of SocialServices' children and families committee said: "I fundamentallydisagree with Colin on funding."
He added: "Why make it difficult to find 150,000 in every localauthority for safeguarding? We know the local government financesettlement will be poor. We know that most children's services spendmore than their budget. And police and primary care trust budgets areunder pressure. Even to switch a small amount of money to safeguardingmeans someone has to stop doing frontline services."
Last month's survey by Children Now revealed that 52 per cent ofcouncils have yet to determine their safeguarding board budget (ChildrenNow, 14-20 September). Of those who had, 26 per cent said it would costmore than the area child protection committees the boards replace.
Green acknowledged that the best area child protection committees werebetter funded. And he also admitted that the proposal for the boards toreview child deaths was proving controversial.
"We support the process of investigating sudden deaths quickly but weneed a dedicated resource," claimed Webb.
Green said the Government did not expect lead members for children'sservices to chair the safeguarding boards although one council isreported to have chosen this option.
Webb added that more clarification was needed on what directors ofchildren's services could do if members of a board failed to honour theagreement.
