Thousands of children are at risk of falling into crisis due to ‘devastating and dangerous’ funding cuts in children’s services, five charities have warned today.
The figures show funding for children’s services has been cut by a third per child in England since 2010.
The charities - Action for Children, Barnardo’s, NSPCC, The Children’s Society and the National Children’s Bureau – identified the top 20 ‘hotspots’ where councils have faced the biggest real-term drop in this funding.
Five of the worst-hit councils were in London, with Westminster seeing its funding fall by more than half (51%).
‘Children’s services are at breaking point and these alarming figures reveal the true scale of the devastating and dangerous funding cuts made year after year by successive governments,’ said chief executive at Action for Children, Julie Bentley.
She added: ‘With the number of child protection cases and children being taken into care at their highest for a decade, it’s unthinkable to continue forcing councils to make crippling cuts to services. Without urgent cash from central government, thousands more children at risk of neglect and abuse will slip through the cracks and into crisis.’
