Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the demand for children and families’ mental health services was growing.
As the Local Government Association has highlighted, the demand for children’s services has risen dramatically in recent years, with child protection enquiries increasing by 126% since 2009-2010. In addition, the number of child protection arrangements for children has increased, and the number of children in care in England has risen to over 80,000, the highest on record. At the same time, we have been living in a period of austerity and rising poverty, and children’s services’ budgets are becoming increasingly stretched. Research by the National Children's Bureau (NCB) has highlighted that due to these pressures, some councils have had to reduce spending on early interventions services by over 80%, while spending in the most deprived areas has fallen by 14% per child.
The pandemic has made a complex situation even more challenging, increasing stress for families and resulting in deteriorating emotional and mental health in infants, toddlers, children, young people and their families. The result is an unprecedented and sustained increase in emotional and mental health referrals by 60%.
As so often is the case, the impact has been greatest on the worst-off: children living in poverty; children experiencing discrimination and exclusion; children at home, in families who have struggled to care for them or keep them safe; and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Moreover, in light of austerity it has often been deeply challenging to retain funding in early intervention, increasing the pressure on targeted and specialist services.
The graph below from Children and young people’s services: Spending 2010-11 to 2019-20 illustrates the change in spending on Children’s Services by local authorities over this time period.
The responsibility for meeting these needs so often falls to children’s services. The new Integrated Care Systems offers opportunities to develop both partnerships with health providers as well as additional funding. But funds can be difficult to access, and it can be difficult to maintain a child and family-centred approach. We believe that we can help here. As a large, well respected voluntary sector provider, we can work with children’s services to support funding bids from philanthropic investors such as grant-giving trusts to help fund regional and sub-regional initiatives. These are just some of the ways we believe we can work with children’s services to create solutions that improve outcomes and deliver the services and support our children and families so desperately need.
The truth is that we are better informed than ever before about the demographics and impact of deprivation on the lives of children and families. However, we recognise that there are also pressures on a finite workforce. At the Anna Freud Centre, our practice is evidence-based and we believe that by working together and applying research to the expert understanding of local needs that children’s services have, together we can increase reach and impact.
That’s why we want to reach out to Children’s Services, to co-design interventions and support for the most vulnerable children and families. This way we can bring together the shared expertise to improve support for our workforce of staff and volunteers and to provide them with the skills and support they need to carry out their incredible work as effectively as possible and improve outcomes. Reduction in spending and overwhelming demand is most powerfully felt at the front line of services, and developing the skills and listening to the experience of this workforce must be at the heart of supporting children and their families.
In March 2022, the Anna Freud Centre launched its clinical offer, which we see as the start of a national conversation with Children’s Services’ leaders to enable us to identify how best we can harness our combined skills and expertise. It gives us a chance to develop new partnerships, extend our reach, learn from others, and share what we know, and to co-design and collaborate with Children’s Services’ experts around the country. Most importantly it offers an opportunity to improve the lives of children and their families at a time when it has never been more challenging and important to do so.
None of this will be straightforward, but together, ensuring that the experiences of children, young people and families are at the heart of developing our innovative offer, can produce extraordinary results.
We’re interested in building sustainable change, influencing national policy and investment, through amplifying the voice of local systems leaders. We’d love to work with you – please do get involved.
Contact
For more information contact: clinicalservicesenquiries@annafreud.org.