Care crisis review report

Stuart Gallimore, ADCS President, said:

“Care is transformative for some children and is essential to keeping them safe from harm. The number of children in care has steadily increased for almost a decade, placing the care and court systems under significant pressure because sufficient funding has not been provided. There is no right answer to the question of how many children we should have in care, instead, our focus should be on whether we have the right children in care and how we can support children and families to stay together safely. Many local authorities are using their increasingly limited resources to do this, including by prioritising funds on edge of care services and working with families to prevent family breakdown, but, this is no easy task in the current financial climate.

“Since 2010, funding for local authorities has been halved despite significantly increased demand for services. This has seriously reduced the range and reach of services we are able to provide to children and their families and our ability to improve their outcomes. The report helpfully supports our call for government to plug the funding gap in children’s services, expected to be at least £2billion by 2020, and echoes our call for an impact assessment which considers how government policy effects children and young people. We need to embed long term change into the system aimed at preventing the need for children to come into care in the first place which can only come from a sustainable, long term approach to offering help and support earlier.”

ENDS

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