Children: Social Services

(asked on 8th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of Action for Children’s report Too Little Too Late on (a) early help and (b) early intervention funding.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 16th March 2022

The Too Little, Too Late report recommends an increase in funding for a range of early intervention services. In the Budget and Spending Review 2021, the government announced a £500 million package for families. This includes £300 million to transform Start for Life services, and to create a network of family hubs in half of council areas in England. The package also includes a £200 million uplift to the Supporting Families Programme (SFP).

The additional SFP funding represents around a 40% real terms uplift for the programme by the 2024/25 financial year. This takes total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million. This funding will help up to 300,000 more families facing multiple, interconnected issues to access effective whole-family support. It will improve their life outcomes and will begin to reduce the pressure on expensive, reactive statutory services, as the system starts to rebalance away from intervening at crisis point.

The report’s recommendations on a legal duty for early help and additional data collection on early help will be considered as part of the department’s response to the independent review of children’s social care.

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