A Freedom of Information request by Action for Children submitted to local authorities across England, finds that there were at least 320,000 ‘missed opportunities’ to provide early help services to children who were then re-referred to social care within 12 months, between 2015/16 and 2019/20. The charity says this equates to an estimated 64,000 children a year.
When children are referred to social services for an assessment and they do not meet the threshold for social care support, social workers have the option to close the assessment and made a ‘step down’ referral to early help.
Action for Children estimates there were 1.26 million occasions where a closed assessment did not lead to an early help referral. It found that in 25 per cent of these cases, the child in question was re-referred to social care within a year, suggesting there were 320,000 missed opportunities to offer early help in this period.
According to the charity, this is the first time that national data on the number of children getting early help has been collected.
Its FOI also highlights the drop in spending on early intervention services by local authorities between April 2015 and April 2020.
Some councils – such as Medway, Northamptonshire and Sunderland -have seen their spending on early intervention fall by more than 70 per cent since 2015.
Early intervention spending covers early help, children’s centres, family support and youth work.
The charity is calling on the Government to improve early help services by:
- Introducing a legal duty on councils to deliver early help for children.
- Increasing funding for early intervention.
- Collecting data on early help provision and outcomes.
Imran Hussain, director of policy & campaigns at Action for Children, said, ‘We should not be waiting for children to be in harm’s way before we help them. Despite the evidence that early help services reduce harm to our children and save money on more costly crisis intervention, the last decade has seen significant budget cuts to these services.
‘The funding and the incentives in the system are working in the wrong way. The lack of early help leaves children vulnerable, and means we are only intervening when it’s too late. This leads to more children going into costly care later down the road. This is morally and economically nonsensical. There is nothing more costly than a missed opportunity.’
The Government has been contacted for a response.
Maternity and early years services
Meanwhile, a new report from the EIF highlights the need to ‘strengthen’ local capacity for planning maternity and early years services.
It identifies how Government can create the conditions for success locally, in particular by building local capacity, removing obstacles, supporting the use of evidence, and raising the profile of maternity and early years services.
The report, ‘Leading and delivering early childhood services: 10 insights from 20 places across England and Wales’, also identifies the key challenges that local areas face, and proposes steps which can be taken to make progress on early intervention and achieve national policy ambitions.
Ben Lewing, one of the report authors and assistant director at the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF), said, ‘This is a key moment for early childhood services given the context of deep-rooted inequalities, resourcing pressures and the consequences of the pandemic. Our report celebrates how local areas are responding with passion and creativity, but emphasises how support for local system planning is now needed to support recovery and service improvement.’