Children’s Services

Debate between Lucy Allan and Fiona Onasanya

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of children’s services by local authorities.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to debate the provision of children’s services by local authorities. My reason for introducing the debate is that I understand that the pressures facing children’s services are rapidly becoming unsustainable, with the combination of Government funding cuts and huge increases in demand leaving many areas struggling to cope.

More and more vulnerable children are in need of care. Children’s charities, including Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, Action for Children, and the National Children’s Bureau, have described a crisis facing children’s services, highlighting that central Government’s decision to deny councils funding is affecting the quality of vital children’s services. Councils have suffered a 40% cut in funding since 2010, leaving them unable to meet soaring demand and to provide safe, effective children’s services. Local authorities overspent on children’s services by £365 million in 2014-15, and by a further £605 million in 2015-16. That overspend shows how dire the situation is for them, and that the funding is insufficient.

Due to cuts, one in three Sure Start centres have closed since 2010. There are now more than 1,240 fewer designated Sure Start children’s centres. The Local Government Association has forecast that children’s services face a £2 billion funding gap by 2020. Serious child protection cases have doubled in the last seven years, and around 500 new cases are launched in England every day.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is to be congratulated on moving this important motion and I am grateful to her. I hope she will join me at a later stage in introducing a Backbench Business Committee debate so that this extremely important motion can be debated more fully. Does she agree that it is a stain on our society that we have so many children being taken into state care, and that the focus is on taking children from their families, rather than on preventive measures that would enable them to stay safely at home?

[Fiona Onasanya]

I agree, but local authorities need to have funds to invest in resources to make prevention a possibility. We cannot keep cutting their funding and expect them to do more with less. I would be more than willing to join a Backbench Business Committee debate, but the issue that I am seeking to highlight is that the funding strategy is failing our local authorities.