We need a joined-up strategy for children

The situation facing many children in this country is at crisis point. More families are finding themselves in desperate circumstances, whether that’s due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis or because early intervention support has been starved of resources due to cuts to children’s social care budgets and funds being diverted towards late interventions.

More than one in four children are living in poverty. Our frontline colleagues tell us families no longer have to choose between food and heating their homes. They can’t afford either.

Around 800,000 of these children do not even qualify for free school meals, which means they’re at risk of being too hungry to learn and develop. Growing up in poverty can have serious effects on a child’s health – both physical and mental – which can affect them long into adulthood.

The fallout from the pandemic also continues, with more children persistently absent from school and increasingly at risk of abuse and exploitation. Rising numbers of children and young people struggle with their mental health but are unable to get help from a health service that is buckling under the strain of rising demand.

This situation is why we – the UK’s five largest children’s charities – have joined together to form the Children’s Charities Coalition.

We believe it’s not too late to ensure that childhoods in the UK are happier, healthier and safe from abuse, neglect and exploitation. To offer every young person the opportunity to thrive and make the very best of themselves. To achieve this, we need commitment from our politicians to address these issues and ensure children’s needs, wishes and outcomes are at the heart of decision-making.

As we head towards a general election, we need all political parties to recognise that the current situation for the UK’s children is unacceptable and address it. We need a commitment that more will be spent on improving the lives of babies, children and young people coupled with a pledge to transform the policy and decision-making process that impacts them.

By putting the right support in place for families from the moment a baby is born, we can lay the foundations for a happy, healthy and productive society. Investing from the earliest years of a child’s life can have lifelong benefits, as this is a stage of rapid brain growth which forms the basis for mental health and wellbeing, speech and language, attention and concentration, social skills and relationships.

Failing to invest in opportunities like family support and youth work means that children and families are missing out on the support they need before situations escalate. As a result, growing numbers of children are reaching the stage where they need to be taken in by foster families or into residential care – including more teenagers with complex needs.

Not only does this create huge costs for the Treasury, but it means fewer children are able to continue living with their birth families safely and with better long-term life chances. Every child should be surrounded by people who love them and so the dial needs to urgently change from crisis intervention to proactive early help.

Every child, regardless of their background, their family income or their postcode, deserves the best possible start in life. That’s why we’re calling for an ambitious cross-government strategy and outcomes framework, to drive improvements for the lives of children, with their voices and insight represented from the start and throughout.

We stand ready to work together to help deliver this, giving children a seat at the table and transforming childhoods for the better.

• Paul Carberry, Action for Children; Lynn Perry, Barnardo’s; Mark Russell, The Children’s Society; Anna Feuchtwang, NCB; Sir Peter Wanless, NSPCC.

• Roadmap from www.ChildrenAtTheTable.org