By 'child protection' services do you mean children being removed from parents by social workers? Expand The child protection services under threat include social work to identify where a child is suffering or likely to suffer a significant level of harm at home, and should be placed in residential or foster care. But local children's social care includes many other services, such as - Social work to help families overcome problems and stay together Support for young carers looking after a relative Essential help for children with special needs or disabilities and their families Making sure lone refugee children in the area receive care and accommodation Providing sufficient, good quality residential and foster care placements Making sure children in residential or foster care have regular reviews of their placement, independent advocacy and mechanisms to have their views taken into account There are several other agencies involved in protecting children, for example the police and health services, and whilst their funding is separate and not directly affected by the withdrawal of central government's formula grant to councils, the work itself is extremely interdependent and where local authorities struggle to fulfill their child protection duties, the effectiveness of the other agencies will be diminished too.
How does this relate to the LGA's call for £2 billion to plug the funding gap in children's services? Expand The Local Government Association has identified that councils will need £2 billion to address the shortfall in funding for children's services by 2020. Whilst this funding from central government would address the immediate funding crisis for children's social care, the sustainability of local services would still be an issue after 2020, when councils would be left to rely on income generated locally to fund children's services. Unless we retain a national mechanism for distributing money from general taxation, poorer areas will face an inevitable discrepancy between the care and protection that local children need and the funds they have available to provide it.
More children are in care in poorer neighbourhoods - are you saying poor people are worse parents? Expand No. Parents in poverty can be just as caring and supportive as wealthier parents (and of course children in better off families can suffer adverse experiences too). It's the extra pressures on poorer parents that make it more likely that problems will occur and relationships will break down - debt, bad housing conditions, insecure tenancies and precarious employment to mention just a few. The relationship between disadvantage and children needing more help and protection is complex, and explored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Coventry University's Child Welfare Inequalities Project.
Why hasn't the government told me my taxes won't support child protection after 2020? Expand Cuts in funding from central to local government can be difficult to spot. Changes like the one planned for 2020 tend to be described as 'freeing up' local authorities to retain their local rates and ending 'dependency' on a centralised system. Greg Clark, then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, explained in the 2016-17 local government finance settlement: "Ultimately, Revenue Support Grant* will disappear altogether, as we move to 100% business rates retention." What isn't mentioned is that this means people's income tax, still gathered by central government, is no longer being spent on the services we expect, and that what we're losing is the vital redistributive power of national, needs-based funding to every area in the country. *Funding from central to local government is brought together in the 'formula grant' and has comprised varying proportions of the Revenue Support Grant and business rates over the years.