Children: Social Services
(asked on 14th December 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were referred to children’s social care services in the last five years to 1 April 2018; and how much funding local authorities received to provide those services over that time period.
The table below shows the number of children referred to children’s social care, England, 2013-14 to 2017-18:
| 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 |
Number of children referred | 570,790 | 553,500 | 547,330 | 571,000 | 581,280 |
Source: Characteristics of children in need: 2017 to 2018, Table A1, found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need-2017-to-2018.
Funding made available to local authorities is largely not ring-fenced, enabling local authorities to target spending according to local needs.
Over the five year period from 2015-16 to 2019-20 councils will have had access to more than £200 billion, after last month’s budget.
At the Autumn Budget the government announced over £1 billion of extra funding for local authorities, this year and next, to help them deliver the services their communities need and support their most vulnerable residents.