About the only good thing that can be said about the worsening crisis in children’s social care is that it is being talked about. The extremely serious consequences of the pandemic for some of the most vulnerable children in the UK were predictable. To an extent, these risks were taken on board by policymakers, for example when they decreed that schools would remain open for those deemed to be in need of support.
But a year and a half into the pandemic, it is clear that children who rely on local authorities for some aspects of their care, if not all of it, have been left horribly exposed. Guardian reporting has uncovered huge increases in referrals to social services, children being taken into care, and notifications related to domestic abuse and exploitation. In Middlesbrough, for example, referrals rose 40%, while the former children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, is so worried about grooming by criminal gangs that she is launching an independent inquiry.
The difficult and, in some cases, desperate situation of children’s social services predates the pandemic. Cuts to council budgets made by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, starting in 2010, have meant a long-term decline in the resources available. Early intervention budgets, along with universal services such as Sure Start sessions, were the first to go. The result has been that a greater and greater share of social work activity is focused on the sharp end of child protection. The 12 directors of children’s services in north-east England recently described the current situation as a “vicious cycle” driven by “exceptional levels of poverty” as well as a chronic lack of public investment.
There is no scenario in which increased spending on children’s social care can be avoided. On this, the government’s toughest critics are in agreement with Josh MacAlister, the man appointed by ministers to review the system (a 2019 manifesto promise). The fear is that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will nonetheless refuse to stump up the cash in his autumn spending review. It would be grimly in keeping with this government’s approach that rather than coming up with funds now, he will put off the inevitable to some point in the future while continuing to issue “levelling up” soundbites.
The damage this will cause should be as blindingly obvious to him and the prime minister as it is to local authorities. Nowhere is the dictum that prevention is better than cure more true than in the case of children with long lives ahead of them. A large body of research points to the longlasting and hard-to-recover-from effects of neglect and abuse in childhood. Yet Ms Longfield last year described the state’s attitude to the approximately 80,000 children in care in England as one of “ambivalence”. The various arms of government, in other words, are reluctant to pick up the pieces of vulnerable young lives that have been dropped.
Reform is required as well as money. The children’s home sector requires rebuilding with children’s needs – and not financial incentives – centre-stage. Above all, poverty must be reduced. Its corrosive effects on family life, including poor mental health, addiction, homelessness and hunger, are well known. To deny or ignore the impact of these on children is not only self-defeating, since the costs of treating the symptoms are so often higher than tackling the cause. It is also cruel.
