Figures show record number of children in care after huge surge in one year

New figures show a huge surge in the number of children in care, with a staggering 90 youngsters entering the care system every single day.

In the 12 months to March 2017, the number of looked-after children in England Wales reached 72,670 – the biggest annual surge in seven years.

The rise has been put down to problems like poverty, substance abuse and poor housing – made worse by cuts to local services, according to campaigners.

They have now urged Chancellor Philip Hammond to use the Autumn Budget next month to improve the £2bn funding gap facing children’s social services by 2020.

Andy Elvin, chief executive of Tact Care, the UK’s largest fostering and adoption charity, told The Independent: “Surestart children services have been obliterated in recent years.

“They were often in the most deprived communities and provided a broad range of support from midwife services to parenting support groups.

“You had a lot of isolated families who might otherwise have started to struggle had a support network around them.

“A lot of them got the help they needed before things got so bad that they met the threshold for social services to get involved.

“But now we’ve had seven years of cuts, and this is what you get.”

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He added that the removal of early support would ultimately lead to removing children as significant risk of harm.

Richard Watts, chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, said: “If nothing is done to address this funding gap crucial services that many children and families across the country desperately rely on will be put at risk.”

Robert Goodwill, minister for children and families, said the Government was giving councils £200bn for local services, including children’s social care as part of a “historic four-year settlement which means councils can plan ahead with certainty”.