Cuts to social care will be a disaster
Reducing funding to statutory services in the autumn budget would be disastrous for social work and social care which are already struggling to meet statutory duties, the sector has warned.
BASW and the Local Government Association (LGA) have both written to the Treasury ahead of chancellor Rachel Reeves' autumn statement underlining where spending priorities should be.
BASW chief executive Ruth Allen said: “Ultimately, the UK government must put forward ambitious plans to tackle poverty, improve working conditions, resource social care with long term funding, and invest in our public services.
“While we acknowledge that Ministers have to make difficult decisions given the fiscal uncertainty of the country, we maintain that the challenges our profession and society faces run deep and will therefore require bold and incisive leadership to address.”
BASW’s ‘asks’ which come from its General Election Manifesto include:
- Significant investment in local authorities in England to ensure social work can fulfil its role
- Scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap across the UK
- Reforming social work student bursaries in England
- Uprating benefits in line with inflation UK-wide
- Increasing the non-taxable mileage allowance rate to 60p a mile UK-wide
- Matching the £2.6billion funding for children’s social care in England – as set out in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care
- Adequately funding foster and residential care, kinship care and wider care services to move away from an overreliance on private care services.
Meanwhile the Local Government Association (LGA) is warning immediate steps are needed to stabilise council finances and protect local services.
It says there is a funding gap of more than £2 billion for 2025/6, rising to £3.9 billion in 2026/27 – and further cuts delivered in the budget would be "disastrous".
The main areas of vulnerability affecting social work and social care as outlined by the LGA include:
- Rising complexity of cases in children's social care, plus soaring costs of placements
- Home-to-school transport costs for children with SEND - due to a 62.7 per cent rise in EHCPs in the past five years
- Rising demand across adult social care leading to an increased spend of £3.7 billion over five years
- A surge in homelessness service costs - £604 million since 2019/20
- The National Living Wage placing pressure on budgets
- Ongoing recruitment and retention issues fuelled by pay gaps
Councils are increasingly drawing on reserves to manage pressures - 42 per cent said they had to dip into un-ringfenced reserves in the past two years.
Last month the government announced it's scrapping the second round of the adult social work apprenticeship fund which would have provided £4 million funding to recruit 130 candidates.
During the summer Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned the autumn budget will be "painful" and will require local authorities to find further savings.
LGA chair Louise Gittins said: "The risk of financial failure across local government is potentially becoming systemic. Councils already face a funding black hole of more than £2 billion next year.
“Having already delivered £24.5 billion in cuts and efficiencies, any further cuts on top of this would be disastrous.
“The government needs to take action to provide councils with financial stability and certainty in order to unlock their full potential."
This week Birmingham City Council confirmed it is cutting 27 part time youth support workers and nine out of 13 senior youth worker roles. It will leave just 23 staff serving some 320,000 children in the city recognised as having the youngest population in Europe.
At Labour’s annual conference last month, chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged: “There will be no return to austerity.”