Children’s services leaders have called for a national “plan for childhood” to transform the health, emotional wellbeing and life chances of a generation of youngsters scarred by austerity and the pandemic.
In a withering assessment of the government’s record over the past few years, they said ministers had presided over deepening child poverty, crumbling schools and an exploding health and wellbeing crisis in young people, with low-income families worst affected.
The government’s failure to prioritise the post-pandemic needs of children in England was a “massive missed opportunity” that would leave many thousands of youngsters “left behind”, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said.
Its warning comes amid rising public concern about children across a range of indicators, from mental health and delayed early years development in “Covid babies” to declining school attendance and rising numbers of kids entering care.
This month, children’s doctors said Britain was experiencing a growing children’s mental health crisis and failing to tackle growing child obesity and tooth decay, while former prime minister Gordon Brown described young people as the forgotten victims of a “poverty epidemic”.
The ADCS criticism comes in a report seven years on from the group’s 2017 paper warning of the growing impact on young people of austerity and welfare cuts. The new report says the outlook for children, exacerbated by the pandemic and cost of living crisis, has deteriorated since then.
John Pearce, the ADCS president, said the nation was at a “pivotal moment” in its approach to children, after years in which the needs of young people had taken a back seat to public spending cuts, short-term policymaking and political instability.
Pearce said because children did not vote they had not been made a political priority. “Every childhood is a critical opportunity for us to make a difference. However, if the status quo continues I worry about the lives and life chances that are being left behind.”
The government had failed to deliver a comprehensive Covid recovery plan for schools and its modest ambitions in this respect were too narrowly focused on academic catch-up, he said. “We should have looked at a recovery plan for childhood, rather than just for education,” said Pearce.
