Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Department for Children, Schools and Families
Question 19 (Paul Holmes): Efficiency Savings
Page 209 in the 2009 Departmental Report records
that as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review settlement
the Department agreed to deliver £4.5 billion of annual,
net, cash releasing savings by 2010-11.
The consequential lead-up targets were £1.615
billion in 2008-09 and £2.937 billion in 2009-10.
In the Budget 2009 the Department committed to saving
an additional £650 million by 2010-11 with a consequential
saving of £209 million in 2009-10.
Chapter 2 of the 2009 Autumn Performance Report
gives details of the efficiency savings recorded to date for 2008-09
of £1.017 billion.
Efficiencies continue to be sought and progress
will be reported in the usual way in future Departmental Reports
and Autumn Performance Reports.
Question 45 (Chairman): Expenditure on children's
social care
A breakdown of children's social care outturn
expenditure for 2008-09 is currently being collected from local
authorities and will be available in January 2010.
The detailed areas covered in that return are set
out in the workbook in Table A1 (Children's and Young People's
Services) at—http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/strategy/financeandfunding/informationfor
localauthorities/section52/guidance/s52guidance
The return includes the main categories of Youth
Justice, Looked after Children, Children's Safety, Family Support
Services and Asylum Seekers. The data will form part of the Department
official statistics and will be published on the Department's
website in the normal way. We will send details to the Committee.
This will be the first time this data will have been collected
alongside education and other local authority expenditure on children
and young people services and should, for the first time, give
an overall picture of local authority expenditure on the wider
children services agenda.
The Department has collected details of local
authorities' budgets for children's social services for both 2008-09
and 2009-10, but as the Secretary of State mentioned during the
hearing, this is a new return which is still being developed.
More importantly we feel that outturn data is a more robust source
of information on children's social care.
In the past children's social care outturn expenditure
has been collected by the Department of Health—http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/social-care/adult-social-care-information/personal-social-
services-expenditure-and-unit-costs:-england-2007-08
Table 2.3 in the document Personal Social Services
Expenditure and Unit Costs England, 2007-08 shows that gross current
expenditure by local authorities on Children's and Families Social
Services was £5.42 billion (26% of the total expenditure).
There have been major reforms to the way Children's
Services have been provided in recent years, which causes difficulties
in providing consistent time series. The Department is looking
at the best way of addressing this.
December 2009
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