More funding is required to improve early intervention services for children’s social care, says Education Committee.

In a report published yesterday, the Education Committee revealed local government spending on children’s social care has risen by 30% between 2014/15 and 2022/23.

The report emphasised the lack of support for care leavers and disabled children, as well as highlighting the issues with recruitment and retention in the social care workforce and the challenges faced by kinship carers.

Commenting on the ‘unacceptable’ standard of living faced by care leavers, Education Committee Chair Helen Hayes urged the Government to develop a National Care Offer that enables local authorities to provide a ‘consistent standard of financial and housing support’ for those leaving care.

The report also recommended that the Department for Work and Pensions provide an exemption for care leavers in its plans to reduce Universal Credit for young people, whilst prioritising care leavers’ ‘access to support through the Youth Guarantee’.

To boost preventative services, the Education Committee advised that most of the new funding announced by the Government in the Spending Review should be dedicated to early intervention programmes, with a view to reduce both ‘the numbers of children coming into care’ and ‘local authority spend’.

Due to the ‘shockingly poor’ outcomes for care-experienced individuals, the Education Committee called for both the Department of Education and local authorities to increase engagement with care-experienced young people ‘in all areas of its work on children’s social care’.

Education Committee Chair Helen Hayes MP said: ‘It is unacceptable that thousands of young people leaving care are being left to face homelessness, unemployment or barriers to education – it is a moral failure.’

‘The system that should be supporting our most vulnerable children is far too often abandoning them at a critical moment in their lives. Urgent action is needed to fix this broken system and give all of our young people the futures they deserve.’

Cllr Arooj Shah, Chair of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, added: ‘We support the Committee’s call for increased funding for early intervention services, which will help to prevent children reaching crisis point and reduce the numbers entering care.

‘It is right to recognise the crucial need to support care leavers. We would like to see a government-funded national exemption for care leavers from council tax, prescription charges, and NHS dental and optical costs, to help prevent financial hardship and ensure access to vital services.’

Cllr Shah also confirmed the LGA’s support for a ‘national fostering recruitment campaign’ and an ‘extension of the kinship fostering allowance pilot’.