Children: Social Services

(asked on 22nd May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to incentivise local authority children’s services to allocate additional funding to early intervention services.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 8th June 2020

Early help plays an important role in promoting safe and stable families. It is about supporting and intervening with the right families, at the right time, and, most importantly, in the right way. It is right that local authorities are free to decide how to use their children’s social care budget to manage local priorities and deliver the best services for children. The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that local areas should have a comprehensive range of effective, evidence-based services in place to address assessed needs early.

The government has provided over £3.2 billion of additional funding to support local authorities in meeting COVID-19 related pressures. We will keep this under very close review over the coming weeks and months. The government also announced at the Local Government Finance Settlement that English councils' core spending power is rising by over £2.9 billion this financial year. This includes £1 billion of new grant funding that can be used flexibly by local authorities to deliver adult and children’s social care services, including early intervention services. Longer term funding considerations are a matter for the next spending review.

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