As the dust begins to settle around the CSR, it’s clear that services for children and families will have to be designed and implemented with the greatest possible effectiveness if we are to sustain, to any significant degree, the progress made in the last few years. The predicted loss of 490,000 public sector jobs over four years means services will shrink, but the removal of almost all ring fencing gives local government much more control over service reductions. Using research in resource allocation, analysis of local needs and priorities, service design and frontline work with families will be central to making constrained budgets work harder. With less resource and fewer staff, sharing knowledge within the sector, and across the public and third sectors, will be more important than ever.
Here’s what we see as the key points and how we can help you respond:
- Sure Start budget to be protected in real terms with work focused on the most disadvantaged families, confirmation of investment in health visitors, and the extension of 15 hours of early years education and care to all disadvantaged two year olds are promising. These services play a critical role in supporting children’s early development and they need to reflect the increasingly clear science about children’s brain development in the first three years. See our research review on safeguarding in the 21st century, which maps out how these and other services need to work together to support children’s early development. We’re piloting our resources to support integrated working in a special project with Children’s Centres in Devon and will share the learning from that work within the network.
- The new £2bn grant for early intervention is a strong endorsement of this area of work. It’s unlikely to be enough, it’s wide ranging in what it has to cover and it’s not ring-fenced – so it’s a key time to ensure elected members understand the value of early intervention more widely. Our next Champions for Children briefing focuses on cost effectiveness in early intervention; make sure your lead member joins us at our Councillors and Trustees’ Seminar in February which also explore this theme. See also our work on effective targeting and family intervention The latest findings from our work with the Local Authorities Research Consortium highlight that early intervention supported by the CAF can bring significant cost savings, which should give local authorities confidence to keep investing beyond the new grant, and C4EO’s work on early intervention and particularly their recent publication Grasping the Nettle provide strong support for continued investment.
- The protection of the schools grant which will also need to fund the £2.5bn pupils premium for teaching disadvantaged pupils recognises the importance of closing the gap in school attainment. The research evidence is really clear that children’s wider social needs have to be met if they are to get the best out of education – see for example our Prompt briefing on improving educational outcomes for looked after children and we’ll be doing more work on effective school strategies for disadvantaged pupils.
- Educational Maintenance Allowances to be ended, replaced with targeted support for those facing the highest financial barriers to participation. This will call for really creative and effective work to reduce the number of young people not engaging in education, work and training. See our research review on this and our Handbook on improving engagement at key stage 3 – an important building block to continued engagement.
- A greater role for the independent sector and for community providers: building evidence into the commissioning cycle will be key. Our highly acclaimed Think Research guidance on evidence-informed commissioning will be useful here and this will be the subject of our next Change Project.
- A tougher settlement for Wales than the other devolved nations: the support we provide to evidence-informed practice and knowledge sharing through our Wales College work programme and the Team Managers Development Programme will be more important than ever.
- The extension of personalised budgets to children with SEN, disabled children and those with a long term health condition: see the great work our sister agency, Research in Practice for Adults has done on personalised budgets. Have a look particularly at their Change Cards website. It looks at managing and responding to change within the self-directed support agenda – but it’s also of wider relevance to the reshaping of the world of children’s services.
- A new national ‘campaign’ to support families with multiple problems, underpinned by Community Budgets focused on family intervention and intended to support a more flexible and integrated approach. We’re contributing to its development through the stakeholder group and will flag how our resources will support children’s services in tapping into this work as it progresses. The integrated approach flags the importance of children’s services making a strong, evidence-backed contribution and highlights the need for good evaluation and cost effectiveness assessment to demonstrate the savings, and the case for continued investment, across agency budgets.
- A further £7bn in cuts in welfare spending on top of £11bn already announced, with disabled adults particularly hit. Cuts to the child care element of Working Families Tax Credit and an increase in the working hours required for eligibility will push more children into poverty. C4EO’s work on effective child poverty strategies is an important resource here.
- Severe cuts in social housing building, higher rents for new tenants and cuts in housing benefit run the risk of creating more homelessness and make it harder for those living in social housing to escape the poverty trap and benefits dependency, and the reduction in the Supporting Families grant will also hit these families. We’re developing links within the housing and community development sector through our current Change Project on social housing and play and will be championing the importance of evidence in housing provision.
- Social science research funding likely to be hit as funding for physical and biological sciences research is better protected: this highlights how essential it is that we make good use of the research we already have. We have strong links with researchers and research funders and will be using these to ensure that limited research budgets are used in ways that best meet the needs of practice.
Overall, children’s services will see a surge in demand at just the time their provision becomes most constrained. Training budgets and other staff development will be under pressure. research in practice is a key investment in people and skills, helping to ensure continued development in an era of austerity.
