Before the coronavirus crisis most local authority chief executives like me were being kept awake at night by the lethal cocktail of rising demand, increased complexity, and subsequent budget pressures we were witnessing across a range of council services, but particularly in our children's services. 

Estimates from before the pandemic showed children's social care in England was facing a £3bn funding gap by 2024-25 – that represented more than a third of the total estimated £7.8bn funding gap across the whole sector over the same period. But worse still it seemed that this gap would continue to grow further in the coming months and years.