Children’s services hardest hit by public health cuts
Services aimed at children and young people are bearing the brunt of cuts to public health spending by local authorities, an investigation has revealed.
Overall, the analysis identified planned spending reductions worth 50.5m in 2016-17, across 77 local authorities which provided information.
Of the 50.5m cuts in 2016-17, the biggest single area was a 7m reduction to services directly aimed at improving the health of children and young people, such as health visiting, school nursing and childhood obesity programmes.
Dominic Harrison, director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, said the reductions were driven by government spending cuts, and were “raising the risks for children and young people”, which would lead to rising costs for adult services further down the line.
He said councils were often redesigning children’s public health services carefully, but added: “It’s not realistic to believe that we can take out money from a service where we have rising demand for example children’s mental health and meet that rising demand, however well we design the service.”
Association for Directors of Public Health president Andrew Furber, who is public health director for Wakefield, said he was aware of “a number of examples” of services’ funding being transferred to NHS commissioners.
“PHE is working closely with local authorities to ensure that the reduction in the grant is conducted in a way that is consistent with the conditions of the public health grant, keeping its primary purpose focused on improving the public’s health.”
The Local Government Association’s community wellbeing spokeswoman, Izzi Seccombe, said: “Given that much of councils’ public health budget goes to pay for NHS services like sexual health, public health nursing, drug and alcohol treatment and health checks, these are cuts to the NHS in all but name.”
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