Councils struggle to meet rise in demand for child protection

Child protection teams are coming under increasing pressure with numbers of children in care and numbers on child protection plans both rising in the past 12 months, a CYP Now investigation has found.

Freedom of Information requests to local authorities with responsibility for child protection have found that among the 109 councils that responded, numbers of children in care have increased 1.26 per cent between March 2014 and March 2015.

Meanwhile, numbers of children on child protection plans rose by 7.36 per cent during the same period.

The number of investigations to decide whether any action is necessary to safeguard a child - known as Section 47 enquiries - are also on the rise, up 11.78 per cent between 2013/14 and 2014/15.

Extrapolated across all local authorities, the findings indicate that numbers of children in care rose from 68,840 in March 2014 to 69,707 in March 2015.

Numbers of children on child protection plans will have increased from 48,300 in March 2014 to 51,855 in March 2015.

And Section 47 enquiries increased from 142,490 in 2013/14 to 159,275 in 2014/15.

Councils under pressure

Alison O'Sullivan, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS), says a year-on-year increase in each of the measures had been expected.

She says the cumulative increase since the coalition government took power in 2010 has left councils under significant pressure (see box).

"This isn't a short-term effect, it's a longer term trend," she says.

"The figures mirror what we found from our own surveys of safeguarding issues.

"One of the things we noticed was an increase in 'front-door' workload. While not all requests for help translate into a need to intervene to protect a child or take them into care, it creates more work at the front door."

O'Sullivan says while the rises are worrying, it does indicate that children's services departments are getting better at identifying more children in need.

She adds: "There has been an increase in awareness of child safeguarding issues, better training for frontline workers and greater public awareness of the issues.

"But it does create additional pressures at a time when funding has been reduced."

O'Sullivan says the expectation is that figures will eventually plateau, but that depends on the "underlying causes" driving the increases.

"One of the causes not talked about often is that as the population grows, there are greater numbers of children," she says. "There is clearly also a link between deprivation and pressures in communities.

"At the moment, we are seeing the effects of austerity and some of the system reform is creating additional pressures for families - particularly the poorest members of society."

Although the overall picture is one of rises, increases in some councils have been more pronounced than others (see table).

The biggest increase was in Warrington - where numbers of children in care rose by 32.6 per cent, from 230 as of March 2014 to 305 as of March 2015.

Another large rise came in Knowsley, also in the North West of England, where numbers of children in care rose by 20 per cent - from 255 as of March 2014, to 306 a year later.

In Birmingham, which has been working to turn around its children's services department following an "inadequate" Ofsted rating last year, there was a 9.7 per cent increase in looked-after children numbers, a 54.1 per cent rise in child protection plans, and a 54.8 per cent increase in Section 47 enquiries.

However, there were also falls in numbers of children in care in some authorities.

The steepest of these came in Bedford, where the number dropped by 39.3 per cent, from 270 as of March 2014 to 164 as of March 2015.

There was also an 18 per cent fall in Poole (from 150 to 123) and a 15.1 per cent fall in Tower Hamlets (325 to 276).

Increased workloads

Andy Elvin, chief executive of The Adolescent and Children's Trust (Tact), says it is likely that the rises in Section 47 enquiries and child protection plans have resulted in increasing caseloads for children's social workers.

"If it is leading to higher caseloads, how safe is that and what does it mean for the retention of social workers?"

he says. "If you are in a highly pressurised workplace and you get more work, it could make you less likely to stay.

"The figures make the case for increased investment in frontline child protection and permanency services."

To that end, Elvin says the government should ringfence the children's social care budget.

"If there has been a 42 per cent increase in child protection enquiries in the space of five years, there should be a marked increase in resources to deal with children in need of protection," he says.

"We can't keep loading more work into the system that is already struggling because of a lack of resources."

Vicious circle

However, O'Sullivan says that in the absence of an injection of cash from central government, local authorities could be forced to invest a greater proportion of their resources in child protection services and the cost of supporting children and young people in care at the expense of investing in early intervention services - effectively creating a "vicious circle".

"When you do have to intervene to protect or provide care for children and an increasing need to find money for that type of intervention, it makes it even harder to sustain early intervention and prevention services," she says.

"There is a fairly well established argument that it is counter-productive in the long term."

Iryna Pona, policy adviser at The Children's Society, says she hopes the figures indicate that local authorities are taking their responsibility to safeguard vulnerable children and young people seriously and are getting better at identifying children who are at risk of serious harm.

"It comes against a backdrop of several cases across the country that have highlighted failings, which have likely sharpened the focus of local authorities, particularly when it comes to younger children," she says.

"However, there is also a risk that it reflects rising need - possibly as a result of ever-diminishing support for crucial early intervention services.

"The government needs to take urgent action to safeguard early intervention services in coming years."

Pona points to the fact that what the figures do not show is which age groups are driving the increase in child protection plans and Section 47 investigations.

"Evidence from our research, as well as earlier official data, have suggested that adolescents, particularly older teenagers, are not getting the same level of intervention as younger children," she says.

"We want to see local authorities giving adolescents equal focus and attention - and an equally serious response - when they are at risk of harm.

"If that requires more resources, then they should be provided."

RISES SINCE 2010

• 8.1% the rise in children in care between March 2010 and March 2015
• 32.6% the rise in child protection plans between March 2010 and March 2015
• 42.5% rise in section 47 enquiries between March 2010 and March 2015

*Increases are based on extrapolated figures drawn from FOI responses of 109 councils