A report published today by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has called for a funding increase of a minimum of £3.1 billion until 2025 to reflect the challenges facing local authorities in delivering children’s social care.
In the report, released ahead of the 2019 spending review, the committee also requested that increased funding go hand-in-hand with systemic change if local authority children’s services are to be sustainable in the long-term.
While local authorities are responding to financial and service pressures by prioritising child protection work and reducing spending on non-statutory children’s services, the majority are still overspending their annual budgets, the report found.
The committee added that more understanding is needed of the factors driving increasing demand for children’s services, the barriers to creating greater residential care placement capacity, and the pressures facing social workers and the wider care workforce.
Other recommendations included:
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