Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to reduce the number of children at risk, following the finding by the Local Government Association that an average of 1,770 children are being referred each day to local authorities' children's services; and what assessment they have made of the adequacy of the resources for, and responses to, the needs of vulnerable children.

The government is committed to ensuring that children at risk receive the right support. The 2015 Spending Review made available more than £200 billion to councils for local services (including children’s services) up to 2019-20. Local authorities are best-placed, and have the flexibility, to direct this towards locally determined priorities, including children’s services. The Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have recently commissioned a joint data-research project to gather evidence on cost and demand pressures in the sector, including data collection into ‘need to spend’ on children’s services.

The government’s statutory guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’, attached, makes clear that providing support for children as soon as a problem emerges is more effective than reacting later. The guidance sets out that preventative action relies on local agencies working together to identify children and families who would benefit from early help. This should form part of continued support to respond to the different levels of need of individual children and families. Through the £200 million ‘Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme’, the government is investing nearly £5 million in targeted support for children in need, testing new approaches to prevent further harm.

The government is carrying out a fundamental reform programme seeking to create a world-class child protection system, with the aim of achieving safety and stability for children, as set out in the government’s publication ‘Putting Children First: Delivering our vision for excellent children’s social care’, July 2016, attached. This work is organised around the key pillars of people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. This wide-ranging programme of reforms underpins action to reduce the number of children at risk – such as through the introduction of new stronger local safeguarding arrangements, assessment and accreditation of social workers and targeted action to reduce risk, for example for children at risk of child sexual exploitation and unaccompanied asylum seeking children.