Council increases spending for ‘inadequate’ children’s services by almost a fifth

The move to boost funding for children’s services, by 18.4 per cent in its 2023/23 budget, has been backed by the council’s cabinet members at a meeting this week.

The uplift has been made amid ongoing concerns around the quality of support for children in Devon.

Children’s services in the county were rated “inadequate” by Ofsted following their last full inspection in January 2020. They found “there are serious failures in the services provided to children and young people in Devon”.

Inspectors also raised concerns about the department during their last monitoring visit in June 2022.

Ofsted said that the council had “not acted quickly enough and the pace of change remains too slow”.

Concerns were also raised about the quality of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities in Devon, following a joint inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission last summer.

Inspectors criticised the council and area's clinical commissioning group for failing to address “significant weaknesses”, adding that “in many cases” communication with families “has got worse”.

“Poor communication contributes to the anger many parents feel about provision in the area,” warned inspectors.

“Parents feel that poor communication is symptomatic of a lack of understanding by staff of their lives and the challenges they face."

The budget is being put before a full council meeting this month and will increase the local authority's overall revenue spending by 10.5 per cent, from £630m to £696m.

The extra spending for children has been achieved through savings elsewhere across the council to focus resources on protecting vulnerable people, said the council.

Almost £50m of savings have been identified. In addition, the government has increased funding for the council by just under 10 per cent.

The council’s director of finance had predicted the council would overspend by £30.5m this year with another “£10m of inflation-related risk is nothing was done”.

“We are determined to safeguard support for the young, the old and vulnerable people in our county, said council leader John Hart.

“Every night on our televisions we are seeing examples of how hard-pressed the NHS is. By working with health and the voluntary sector we need to be investing more in social care so we can reduce bed blocking and take some of the pressure off our doctors and nurses.

“We need to continue investing in modernising our services for children and young people to give them the best start in life.”