After years of cuts, the pandemic has left social services and the young people they support brutally exposed
About the only good thing that can be said about the worsening crisis in children’s social care is that it is being talked about. The extremely serious consequences of the pandemic for some of the most vulnerable children in the UK were predictable. To an extent, these risks were taken on board by policymakers, for example when they decreed that schools would remain open for those deemed to be in need of support.
But a year and a half into the pandemic, it is clear that children who rely on local authorities for some aspects of their care, if not all of it, have been left horribly exposed. Guardian reporting has uncovered huge increases in referrals to social services, children being taken into care, and notifications related to domestic abuse and exploitation. In Middlesbrough, for example, referrals rose 40%, while the former children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, is so worried about grooming by criminal gangs that she is launching an independent inquiry.