Member News: Action for Children responds to Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England led by Josh Macalister

Director of Policy and Campaigns at Action for Children, Imran Hussain, said:

“The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care must be a milestone moment in reforming and fixing this broken system which is letting down our most vulnerable children.

“The Review is totally right to identify that too often we wait for children to be harmed before they are offered help. The Review’s compelling big answer to this big problem is that we need to see a big switch from a system geared to putting children into care, to a system geared to preventing the need for children to go into care in the first place.

“Our own research¹ shows that 64,000 children every year are missing out on early help services and then being re-referred to social care within 12 months. Children’s social care services need to be proactive and intervene before it becomes too late.

“Now it's time to turn these words into action. The Government must grasp this opportunity to urgently reform the system, working alongside care-experienced young people.”

We welcome three key interventions from the review, that will help reset children’s social care towards early intervention.

Our response on family help:

“New family help teams will give a clear responsibility to local authorities to put preventative family help at the core of children’s services. They should be given the strongest legal backing by the government.”

Our response on funding:

“After a decade of steep cuts to services, £2bn of extra funding for family help services would be a vital lifeline for families and would save money in the long run. The Treasury must commit to investing properly in prevention.”

Our response on a guiding vision for Children’s Social Care:

“Action for Children had called for a National Framework for Children’s Social Care to bring vision and common purpose to a fragmented system. We are delighted to see the Review pick up this recommendation.”

Source:
www.actionforchildren.org.uk

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