Young Adults: Public Service Funding

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing this debate and giving us the opportunity to put on the public record things that are indeed of national concern and very close to all our hearts. It is a massive area and one full of nuance and complexity. So, for my contribution, I want to keep mainly to the realm of local government drawing on my experience both as the former elected Mayor of Watford for 16 years and currently as a vice-president of the LGA.

For the local government family, there has been an avalanche of change over the last decade in how we deal with young people and, in particular, how services have changed, been adapted or simply been cut altogether. To us it feels like uncertainty piled upon uncertainty, which is demoralising for those working with young people and certainly makes recruitment and retention more difficult. Of course, it also has very real consequences for individuals, their families and, ultimately, society as a whole.

Children and young people should be supported to get the best, not just get by. It has been increasingly challenging to turn this ambition into a reality when cumulative financial pressures are forcing councils to make unpalatable decisions about the allocation of scarcer resources. Many of the services that impact on young adults are delivered by local government. The challenges facing those youngsters can span a range of areas and are multifaceted; they include poverty, housing, skills and employment, access to training and careers advice, access to mental and physical health services, and exposure to violence, crime, grooming and exploitation. In all of those areas, local government, quite rightly, has a positive role to play and is often the lead agency.

Some facts: local Government has lost 60 pence out of every pound of funding for services and faces a £3.5 billion pay gap by 2025, just standing still; this year, 88% of councils have overspent on their children’s services budget and, for the first time, it overtook adult social care as the number one issue that councils were most worried about funding. Why? Perhaps because social workers are starting new cases for more than 1,000 children every day on average—I rechecked that fact because I did not believe it—and some 500 cases a day presenting with mental health problems. The total number of looked-after children has reached a new high of over 75,000, representing the biggest annual rise of children in care for eight years. Child protection inquiries are up by 158% in 10 years, and the number of children on protection plans has increased by 84% over the same period.

A study by Action for Children, Barnardo’s and the NSPCC says:

“Funding available per child … for all children’s services”,


in England has fallen from,

“£813 in 2010-11 to £553 in 2017-18”.

The facts speak for themselves.

Councils in London have suffered the worst cuts, with northern cities not far behind. All services have now been pared down. There has had to have been an inevitable and necessary shift to focus on statutory services, at the expense of preventative services, to deal with young people in crisis, rather than young people who are perhaps in a bit of trouble, or who are struggling, or who are in need of the right kind of services to stop them from getting to that point at all.

It is, however, becoming increasingly hard to look at the facts and not see some cause and effect. Has this reduction in spend on young people, for instance, meant that knife crime has increased? Who can say for sure? However, one thing any sensible person can say with certainty is that services to support the transition to adulthood of many tens of thousands of our youngsters have reduced or are non-existent. This is well evidenced, and it is not fantasy to hypothesise that, taken all together across an area—whether that area is a village, a small town or a large city—young people’s lives are being impoverished and support for them must be affecting their lives.

Councils should be given the resources they need to work with young people and prevent their involvement in crime rather than picking up the pieces after the offences have been committed. Even then, at the sharp end, there has been a significant reduction in the youth offending teams. These were working well in co-ordinating a response in partnership with the police and probation, social and education services, and others, with significant results in cutting local crime and supporting vulnerable young people. The government grant to YOTs has been cut from £145 million in 2010-11 to £72 million in 2017-18.

The recent report from the Children’s Commissioner for England revealed that there,

“are some worrying trends. Mainstream and acute services such as age 4-16 education and provision for children in care have been protected at the expense of targeted preventative services, removing vital safety nets for some very vulnerable children. The 60% cut in Sure Start and youth services will see an increasing number of vulnerable children fall through the gaps”.

I believe that this is already happening. The cuts that have happened gradually, over nearly a decade, are now showing their cumulative impact. Councils are overspending, have raised council tax to the limit that they are allowed to by Government, increased fees and charges, and have used their reserves to prop up essential services.

Youngsters do not arrive in crisis overnight, and many could be prevented from getting to that point if we helped them sooner and in a more effective way. There is much research to be done. We are in effect trying to manage and contain crisis in children’s lives after allowing it to escalate.

If we continue to see greater numbers of youngsters marginalised, the cost to the state will be greater. But it is the lifetime cost to these young people that we should be most troubled by; they have only one childhood and one chance to grow up into healthy and productive citizens. We see the cost of this lack of preventive work in increasing current pressures on children in care, family courts, special schools and special educational needs and disability provision in general, and in spiralling numbers of school exclusions and the consequent increase in younger children linked to violent street gangs.

Could the Minister point to ways in which the Government are looking to work out of government silos to build cross-cutting departmental services, built around a clear evidence base of the unmet needs of children? Do we know what really works? Do we have the right kind of data? I am particularly interested to know what will happen to the recently discredited troubled families programme, and its funding, when it ceases in 2020. For local government, the new fairer funding formula and the decision to omit deprivation from it has caused serious concerns. Could the Minister reassure us that funding will be matched to the likely level of need when the new regime finally comes in?

It is vital that the Government heed the consistent and increasing warning that children’s services are now at tipping point. Will the Government commit to using the upcoming spending review to deliver a long-term strategy that enables councils to meet the growing need for support for some of the most vulnerable in society—our young people?