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Almost half of councils in England cut their budgets for community services designed to support families over the past year, according to newly-disclosed data.
Budget reductions to “family hubs” and children’s centres were reported by 49 per cent of local authorities between 2023-24 and 2024-25, according to freedom of information disclosures.
The total spending for all children’s centres and family hubs for the 116 local authorities who responded to FOI requests decreased from £444mn in 2023-24 to £437mn in 2024-25, marking a real-terms 1.6 per cent drop.
Councils spent £577mn on children’s centres and family hubs in the year ending March 2024, according to modelling by the Centre for Young Lives shared with the Financial Times. The findings were based on responses from three-quarters of councils in England.
Baroness Anne Longfield called on the government to end the “patched-up, underfunded, postcode lottery” in family support.
The executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, and a former children’s commissioner in England, said ministers must provide “new investment and a long-term drive and determination” to establish a “national network of joined-up” services.
Funding for family services was a quarter of the annual allocation under the previous Labour government’s Sure Start programme for under five-year-olds in 2009-2010, the final year before the government stopped protecting ringfenced funding of the scheme.
The total amounted to less than a quarter of the total £2.5bn spent on Sure Start in 2010, according to inflation-adjusted estimates.
The data underscore the challenge the government faces in meeting its target of ensuring 40,000-45,000 additional children reach a good level of development before the end of this parliament.
The “Opportunity Mission” milestone is one of the six targets Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the government will meet by 2029.
Ministers have pledged that a record 75 per cent of five-year-olds in England will be “ready to learn” when they start school — a measure of development that includes being able to sit still, share with others and do basic numeracy.
Only 68 per cent of children are currently deemed to have reached the standard when starting school, according to government data.
Longfield warned the government’s Opportunity Mission will be harder to achieve without more investment in family support services.
“Since 2010, early help and family support programmes have been hollowed out”, said Longfield. “The current spend on integrated place-based support is insufficient
Sure Start centres offered early education, childcare, health services, parenting support and employment advice for mothers. Family hubs are less targeted and cater to young people up to the age of nineteen.
Since 2011, when the programme’s ringfenced grant was removed, local authorities have taken different approaches, with some closing almost all Sure Start centres, with others replacing them.
There are an estimated 2,100 family hubs and centres across England, with an average annual spend of £275,000 per hub — just over half of the average spend per hub under Sure Start.
Family hubs are financed through a combination of non-ring-fenced funding from local authority finance settlements and the government’s “family hubs and start for life” programme.
Experts warned the lack of family support services is having a direct impact on schools.
A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year found children with access to a Sure Start centre before they started school had a positive significant impact on their education readiness, particularly low-income children.
“Family services need to be an absolutely essential pillar of any government’s strategy to improve school readiness,” said Sarah Cattan, IFS research fellow.
According to a survey commissioned by the charity Kindred², teachers are being forced to spend 2.4 hours in a school day supporting children who are not “school ready”, defined as “children being developmentally ready to access learning and development opportunities in Reception year”.
“Parents are our children’s first educators”, said Felicity Gillespie, Kindred² director, referring to the latest data. “The lack of funding to educate and enable them is a shocking indictment of a societal blind spot that simply should not exist when all the compelling evidence is there.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Giving every child the best start in life is central to our mission to break the unfair link between background and success. Through our Plan for Change, we’ll get thousands more children school-ready by aged 5.
