DfE criticised for failing to understand drivers for children’s social care demand
The Department for Education does not fully understand what is driving demand for children’s social care, or why there is such wide variation between local authorities in their activity and costs.
Those conclusions have come from Parliament’s spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) in a report Pressures on children’s social care.
It said that in 2017-18 there were 655,630 children referred to local authorities because of concerns about their welfare, an increase of 7% over seven years.
But in the same period councils performed 77% more child protection assessments with the reasons for this disparity remaining unknown.
The most expensive and serious cases, where children are taken into care, have risen by 15% since 2010-11 - more than double the rate of population growth.
Local authorities expected to spend £4.2bn on children in care in 2018-19, some £350m more than they budgeted for in this year.
Auditors said: “The Department [for Education] does not fully understand what is causing increases in demand across all local authorities and, until recently, it did not consider this a fundamental part of its responsibilities.”
The NAO said the activity and cost of children's services varied significantly with ‘children in need’ cases ranging from 301 to 1,323 per 10,000 children. Annual costs varied even more, from £566 to £5,166 per child.
Legal changes caused some of the increase in workload, the report noted.
It said social workers reported increases in activity resulting from changes in how courts handle child protection cases, with some citing the ‘Public Law Outline’, as requiring local authorities to put more case decisions before family courts.
NAO head Amyas Morse said: “The department has started to build its understanding of variations in services, but it should know more than it does.”
Anntoinette Bramble, chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, said: “Nine in 10 councils had to spend more than they had budgeted for children’s social care last year. It is clear that the most urgent and pressing issue is not variability but the very real funding crisis facing vital children’s services across the country, which face a funding gap of £3.1bn by 2025.”
Stuart Gallimore, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said: “Local authorities are continuously being pushed to make savings yet many of the factors fuelling need for help, and influencing spend, such as rising child poverty, deprivation and the increasing prevalence of domestic abuse, substance misuse and poor parental mental health are not within our gift to influence.”
Children and Families Minister Nadhim Zahaw said his department was “working across government to improve our understanding of demand for children’s services”.
He added: “We have raised the bar in children’s social care and the child protection system, so that children at risk are identified sooner, and we are tackling the reasons why children are in need in the first place.”
