As councils across the country weigh up how far today’s £2bn funding announcement might help avert the immediate crisis for adult social care, today’s budget offered nothing at all to address the parallel crisis in children’s services.

Numbers of children ‘in need’ under the Children Act are steadily rising, and record numbers of children are now being placed on care orders, becoming the subject of child protection plans and taken into care. English Family Courts are at breaking point trying to process the volume of care applications. The English care system is struggling to find enough capacity to care for these children, resulting in some of the most vulnerable of all children being sent hundreds of miles from home to receive treatment and care in Scotland. The bill for meeting this urgent and rising need for care is borne solely by councils, who today received nothing at all from the Treasury to help them meet their critical parental responsibilities for every child and young person in care.

Today the Chancellor claimed that his ambition is to prevent today’s children bearing the future cost of the 'ever-increasing national debts' created since the Credit Crunch. But not only have government austerity policies failed to provide a secure future for our current generation of children, the Chancellor's voter-focussed budget utterly fails to recognise the needs of children right now, 70,000 of whom rely on their local council to provide them with all the care and support a parent would.