Children’s Social Care Workforce
Debate between Brendan Clarke-Smith and Mike Amesbury(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Mike Amesbury
The Conservative-led Local Government Association has recently published figures about the funding pressure. Of course, that was based on a settlement, with inflation around 2%. We are looking at a shortfall of around £3.4 billion for local government, and 60% of local council finances and budgets go on social care. The system is broken; the current situation is not sustainable.
Brendan Clarke-Smith
I thank the hon. Member for his point, and I agree there are considerable pressures on local authorities. The hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston mentioned agency rates earlier, and the spiralling cost of those. What the Government believe—and I have spoken with the LGA about this—is that the early intervention in some of the things that we are looking at putting in place, and this implementation, will help us to cut some of those costs. I fully recognise that there are significant challenges at the moment, but I hope that what we are doing will drive down some of those costs for local authorities and allow us to provide them with the support that I accept local authorities certainly need.