Business goes on as the cuts bite

The tragic story of Riven Vincent, the mother of a severely-disabled child who told the website Mumsnet last week that she could no longer cope, drew attention to at least two fundamental issues other than her own personal circumstances.
The first was that the media onslaught was aimed squarely at the prime minister rather than the mother’s local authority, even though, technically, it was the latter’s responsibility. Indeed, the media rather buried the local authority angle since it muddied their line that it was David Cameron’s fault for promising to protect disability care services – when he met the mother during the election – and then not delivering.
This sets an uncomfortable precedent for the coalition which has striven, so far, to devolve the decision-making and the odium about cuts to councils. For while there will be many more tragic individual cases blame for their predicament looks set to be laid at the door of Number 10, not the civic centre.
Second, the case of Ms Vincent reminded the public of the huge and rising bill for children’s services, and the difficulty of containing costs, let alone reducing them, despite swingeing budget cuts.
It is appalling that families with severely-disabled children – already victims – find themselves further victimised through spending cuts. Nor will Ofsted allow any reduction in safeguarding services after the Baby Peter case.
So, what does it imply? As one county chief executive said to me: ‘When it comes to closing a branch library or protecting child safeguarding services, of course, I’ll do the latter.’ Another said to me: ‘As a county, we will become little more than an agency for safeguarding vulnerable children and adults.’ Recent council budgets announced for 2011 show them making strenuous efforts to maintain children’s services budgets or, in some cases, increase them.
The public, however, remain generally ignorant of how much of their council’s budget is swallowed up by children’s – and adult care – services. All they see are their favourite local amenities being cut from parks to libraries to community centre grants. The tragic case of Ms Vincent should focus the minds of national politicians on how children’s services can be adequately funded without laying waste to all other council services.