Protecting and supporting Hampshire's vulnerable children and young people
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Maintaining and developing high quality safeguarding and support services for vulnerable children and young people and re-focussing on effective early help services to prevent families becoming in need of more acute support, lie at the heart of the Children's Services budget proposals.
At his decision day on Wednesday 23 January, 2013, Councillor Roy Perry, Hampshire County Council's Executive Lead Member for Children's Services will be asked to recommend the budget proposals to the Council's Leader and Cabinet for their consideration in February.
The Children's Services budget for 2013/14 is £867m, with £706m forming the budgets for schools. The remainder totalling £160m will be spent on a range of provision including social care services to ensure the most vulnerable children and young people are kept safe and well supported. In line with other County Council services, efficiencies representing 2% of the non-schools budget need to be made, but are designed to ensure minimal impact on the delivery of core frontline services and staff in 2013/14.
Children's Services played its part in the early and decisive action taken by Hampshire County Council to respond to the national deficit reduction programme. It helped achieve savings of £100million over the last two years. This put the Council in a very strong position to tackle future funding challenges, which are expected to be even tougher from 2015/16. The Department faces continued significant pressures on its social care services with increasing numbers of children in care or leaving care and requiring support as well increases in the numbers of children with complex disabilities.
However, with a balanced budget the Children's Services department can now concentrate on re-shaping and developing services to meet the further challenges ahead. These include reductions and changes to the Early Intervention Grant funding from Government.
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