Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of increasing funding for early intervention in children’s social care on costs to the public purse.

Local government spending on children’s social care has risen by £4.4 billion over the last decade whilst spend on non-statutory, preventative services has fallen from £3.9 billion in 2012/13 to £2.7 billion in 2022/23, which is a fall of 31% in real terms.

The department wants to shift the dial to prioritise earlier intervention, removing barriers to accessing support. Families should access the right help at the earliest opportunity, to improve outcomes for children and to reduce the need for future costly intervention.

In this financial year, over £500 million is available to local authorities to roll out Family Help, multi-agency child protection and family network reforms through the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme. The FFP programme is based on strong evidence from several programmes delivered by local partners and we expect these reforms to lead to sustained reductions in spend on children’s social care. Local authorities will be able to recruit more practitioners who can spend more time with children and families at the earliest opportunity, to avoid later costly crisis intervention. We expect to generate savings by diverting children from care and improving school attendance and attainment, directly impacting the Opportunity Mission.

The government will continue to look at this closely in the next phase of the spending review.