The Red Book: Addressing the false economy

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The impact of the budget cuts does not only cause suffering to children and families, it also:

• Has a long-term impact on communities and society as a whole
• Results in more children and families reaching crisis point
• Has a long-term detrimental economic effect

Vulnerable people are already paying the human cost of decisions made in the first year since the spending review.

Continuing to pursue policies which disproportionately affect the most vulnerable will result in increased costs to the state.

The cost of not intervening early

Research commissioned by Action for Children from the new economics foundation (nef), Backing the Future, identified both the financial savings and the benefits that investing in early intervention would bring.
This social return on investment analysis found that:

• Every £1 invested annually in our early intervention based services benefits society by between £7.60 and £9.20
• Every £1 invested in our children's centres generates a £4.60 social return

The cost of not providing intensive family support

Action for Children’s intensive family support services are working effectively to tackle social deprivation, anti-social behaviour and neglect. If these life-changing services such as these are cut across the UK, it will cost the UK economy £1.3billion per year

Research Action for Children commissioned New Philanthropy Capital to conduct showed that one family support service run by them that works with over 40 vulnerable families:

• reduces the number of children going into care by more than half
• saves the local authority more than £37,000 per year for every child

The cost of not supporting disabled children, young people and their families

The short breaks and intensive support Action for Children provide improve disabled children's and their families' wellbeing

Independent research undertaken by nef consulting found that total state savings of £173,988,440 could be made if short breaks were provided to all the families with disabled children who need them.

This would be achieved as a result of the decreased cost to:

• Longterm residential care from reductions in the number of disabled children placed outside of the family home: £135,008,061
• Health service from reduction in parents', families' and carers' stress: £17,610,108
• Schools of educating siblings with behavioural and emotional difficulties: £21,370,271

Download Addressing the false economy