Thousands of children missing early social care help

Action for Children has revealed that there were at least 320,000 missed opportunities to provide early help to children who were then re-referred to social care within 12 months.

Children assessed by social services who do not meet the threshold for social care support can have their assessment closed but social workers also have the option to make a ‘step down’ referral for early help instead. Freedom of Information data taken from 2015-2020 showed that this would have impacted an estimated 64,000 children every year.

The charity estimated that there were 1.26 million cases where a closed assessment did not lead to an early help referral, and that in 25 per cent of these cases the child was re-referred within a year, suggesting there were 320,000 missed chances to help vulnerable children. Concerns are growing about opportunities being missed to protect children and reduce the numbers going into care, as well as a failure to relieve the pressure on overstretched social services.

Nine in 10 councils had cut spending on early intervention services between April 2015 and April 2020.

The charity is calling for the government to introduce new legal duties for councils to give children early help, increase funding for early intervention and for data to be collected on early help provision and outcomes.

Imran Hussain, policy and campaigns director 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.”