“It is great that the influential Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has backed the LGA’s call for new funding to be invested in children’s services in the forthcoming Spending Review, and recognises our estimation of the £3.1 billion funding gap councils face by 2025.
 
“These are absolutely vital council services in desperate need of significant and sustained long-term investment, which keep children and young people safe from harm and the worst abuses of society.
 
“However, as the LGA and the sector have long warned, children’s services are at a tipping point as a result of increasingly high levels of demand for support and cuts in central government funding.
 
“The fact that nine in 10 councils overspent their budgets on children’s social care in 2017/18 indicates the huge financial pressures councils all over the country are under to support vulnerable children and young people.
 
“Councils have also played a pivotal role in making the Troubled Families Programme a success for some of the most vulnerable families, and it is good that the Committee supports the need to continue this vital service through a successor programme.”

#CouncilsCan: Spending Review 2019