Council funding crisis could be ‘catastrophic’ for vulnerable children
NHS Trusts are allowed to overspend with some rhetorical criticism but not swingeing sanctions. This story (and there will be a dozen so or more local authorities over the next 24 months to follow) shows that local authorities conversely are the whipping boy in our unbalanced relationship between central and local government. Lets hope those in Central Government of both political hues who have presided over this get the blame and not the local authorities themselves which have been denuded of over 50% of their funding in recent years. And who are the real victims in all this? – those vulnerable people who need society’s help most! This story tells us:
Families with vulnerable youngsters are unable to get help from cash-strapped councils, the children’s commissioner for England has said.
Anne Longfield’s comments followed Tory-run Northamptonshire and East Sussex councils’ plans for major reductions in the services they provide across all areas of activity as a result of funding shortfalls.
Longfield said she had written to ministers calling on the government to intervene to ensure youngsters across the country were protected from local authorities’ financial difficulties.
“I’m extremely worried that the financial difficulties that Northamptonshire county council are facing will mean that they are not going to be protecting the services for the most vulnerable children, which could have catastrophic consequences for those children,” she said.
Work carried out with the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed “half of all the spending on children’s services goes on the 70,000 children who are in care”, she said, and “if you add in those who are on the child protection registers, that’s over 80%, leaving very, very little for any others”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday: “Councils have been warning for some time that they are not going to be able to meet their statutory requirements.
“I can see and hear every day from families and children who simply can’t get help.”
There were about 1.5 million children living in families with very high needs such as “severe mental health problems, domestic violence in the household” who were not getting “any form of substantial help”, she said.