Action for Childrens Red Book

Action for Children's Red Book The coalition Government has made a commitment to protect the most vulnerable from the impact of spending cuts, and also to make sure services can step in to support families and individuals before problems escalate or become entrenched, with serious consequences for individuals, communities and society as a whole. It has undertaken reviews and put in place policies and initiatives that are intended to achieve these objectives, including: the review into child protection which has taken a measured and holistic stance concentrating on how best to support effective practice and deal more effectively with safeguarding concerns at an early stage the reviews into the Early Years Foundation Stage, child poverty and early intervention each proposing a switch of resources in favour of prevention.

 
The introduction of the Early Intervention Grant
The focus on the 'foundation years' and the ongoing support for the children's centres network
The introduction of the pupil premium, targeting funding at children in the most deprived areas
An increase in the number of apprenticeship places
The commitment of £800million to deliver short breaks to disabled children and their families
The commitment to turn around the lives of the 120,000 families with multiple problems

Meanwhile, however, dramatic reductions in funding are proceeding apace.
Action for Children's response on the day of the 2010 spending review was clear: our most vulnerable children, young people and families must not pay the price for the economic difficulties facing the UK or the political and economic decisions being made subsequently.

We committed to monitoring closely and reporting back on the impact of those decisions as they play out in our communities. We set out to understand whether the measures taken so far by the coalition Government have protected the most vulnerable during this time of unprecedented public spending cuts, radical reform of the welfare state and public service delivery, and a changing relationship between the individual and the state.
We have undertaken an in-depth analysis of our services which support nearly 80,000 of the most vulnerable children, young people and families in the UK. We have done this through the eyes of the front-line professionals who work directly with them every day. The Red Book is not about the impact on Action for Children. We are just one part of an infrastructure of support, interdependent with the services which refer to us, which supports children, young people and families in other ways. The experience of our front-line staff provides a window into a rapidly changing world.

Impact on services

Within a much-reduced total pool of funding, decision-making over where to prioritise has been devolved to local government to a far greater degree than before. This makes it harder to review whether or not the coalition Government's intention to protect the most vulnerable is translating into decisions on the ground.
In the comprehensive spending review, the Government outlined its policies under the headings of growth, fairness and reform. It is important that it retains the ability to track these principles in practice, across an increasingly diverse set of local circumstances, in order to avoid unintended negative consequences on the lives of the most vulnerable children, young people and families. Our findings show that while there are more children in need of support, cuts to the budgets of vital services mean that increasingly this need cannot be met. It is time to take stock of the picture across the country.
42% of services have seen a rise in children, young people and families needing the services we provide in the last year.

48% reported this demand has further increased in the last three months.
5,000 vulnerable children, young people and families have been identified as needing the services we provide but are currently not receiving a service.

68% of our service managers have had cuts to their budgets for frontline services, of which 37% reported cuts of between 11% and 30%.

Service managers believed that the demand for services had risen because of an increase in family breakdown (41%), parental mental health/ physical health issues (39%), reduction in other community services such as child and adolescent mental health services (38%) and reduction in household income because of unemployment (26%) or benefit reduction (22%). We are increasingly working with families who are reaching breaking point where, for example, children are at risk of neglect and entering the care system, or getting into trouble with the law, or where parents are no longer able to cope:
51% of services reported that compared to six months ago, they are supporting children and young people facing more severe issues in their lives. For example, 95% of our managers told us that they have suspected that a child they have worked with or come into contact with has been neglected.
52% of services reported that compared to six months ago, families are seeking our support for more severe problems.

In some cases the combination of increased need, and changes to our budgets, has led to reductions in the crucial face-to-face time our staff can spend with vulnerable children, young people and families. Of those who responded to questions on change to direct contact time, more than a fifth (22%) saw a decrease in contact hours. We would like to have the capacity in our services to respond to the higher levels of need but we are unable to do so as our services are being cut.
Our analysis has also shown that in some cases we now find ourselves the last local service standing. We work in partnership with specialist services, for example mental health or substance misuse services but we are seeing these essential services disappearing, or families no longer being able to access them because of waiting lists or new criteria.

Because of Action for Children's size and reach across the UK, we are able to see first-hand the comprehensive impact of the cuts, locally and nationally. Our evidence shows a series of individual services that are now struggling to meet the demand for their support. But the power of our evidence lies in the big picture: without the ability of an organisation like Action for Children to review impact across a large number of services, the cumulative impact of individual, local difficulties might not be seen until it was too late to stop the system as a whole from falling apart.

Economic analysis

The economic analysis carried out by the Social Market Foundation (see 'The end of the beginning?' section) confirms that with few exceptions, fiscal changes will hit low-income families hard across benefits and many services:
Economists are predicting an alarming increase in levels of absolute poverty by 2013, as a consequence of policy decisions.

With the overall emphasis towards reductions in public spending in order to reduce the deficit, it is therefore not surprising that those who depend on these services - vulnerable children, young people and families - would bear much of this burden.

Conclusion

The withdrawal of help from those who need it most must be seen in a wider context which transcends the current or any single government. Our political system is not designed in a way that can adequately support the most vulnerable children. These failings were documented in the 2008 Action for Children publication As long as it takes - a new politics for children1 which identified the problems caused by political churn and instability and made a clear case for smarter investment in children, through a renewed political system. The current dramatic reductions in public spending have thrown this issue into stark relief and it must now be addressed urgently. We are clear that if action is not taken now there are four main risks:
Children, communities and ultimately the state will pay the price for the decisions made now, both socially and economically. It is a false economy to cut services that prevent family breakdown, prevent children unnecessarily entering care and prevent young people entering the justice system.
The situation will get worse. As the problems that families are facing deepen, the need for services will continue to rise, sometimes quickly and dramatically.
We will reach a point where we cannot reverse decisions that are directly affecting vulnerable children, young people and families. There is an existing infrastructure at local level (including the network of children's centres, for example). If this infrastructure is stripped back too far, it may not be affordable to replace it in the foreseeable future.
The children that are missing out now will not get the chance for vital support again. Opportunities to help them during their childhoods will be lost.