A recent report for the Children's Commissioner published by the IFS (Kelly et al 2018) suggested that, of the entire £8.6bn allocated to children's services, over half is now spent on the 73,000 children who are in the care system, with the remainder of the budget left to cover 11.7 million children.

Coupled with cuts to preventative services like Sure Start and young people's services of around 60% it is easy to see why many now cite the children's services funding gap as nearer to £3bn than previous estimates of around £2.5bn. The picture is no rosier in adult care where we know that the funding gap has simply received a sticking plaster in the form of ad-hoc funding and some let-up on council tax increases in the form of a misnomer care ‘precept'. This is a remarkably depressing picture.