Fourth minister for children’s social care of 2022 appointed

The government has appointed its fourth children’s social care minister of the year ahead of a critical period for the sector.

Claire Coutinho, appointed as a junior minister in the Department for Education last month, has been given responsibility for social care, alongside special educational needs and disability and other issues concerning vulnerable and young children.

Coutinho, in effect, succeeds Kelly Tolhurst, who left her post as minister for schools and childhood in October, just one month after her appointment was announced.

Unlike Tolhurst, Coutinho will not combine her responsibilities for children’s social care and vulnerable children with oversight of schools policy, while her appointment also returns children’s social care to being the responsibility of a junior minister. Tolhurst had held the role at the more senior minister of state level.

Before joining the DfE, Coutinho, an MP since 2019, spent a month as minister for disabled people, and her previous roles have included working for centre-right think-tank the Centre for Social Justice in areas including regeneration policy.

New minister’s praise for social workers

While her brief as minister for children, families and wellbeing was confirmed today, Coutinho signalled that she would be responsible for children’s social care on Friday, when she tweeted her appreciation for social workers ahead of the annual Social Worker of the Year Awards ceremony.

Social workers do an incredible job to help the most vulnerable children and families & tonight the @socialworkaward will recognise some outstanding work. Congrats to all of tonight’s winners in advance & a big thank you to all the amazing social workers across the country #SWA22

— Claire Coutinho MP (@ClaireCoutinho) November 4, 2022

As with incoming education secretary Gillian Keegan – who became the fifth holder of that post in 2022 last month – Coutinho’s appointment comes ahead of a significant period of change for the sector, with four major reports sitting in their in-trays.

Sector faces shake-up and demand pressures

The DfE had committed to responding to three of these – the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’s final report, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s inquiry into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson and the Competition and Markets Authority’s study of the children’s social care market – before the end of 2022.

However, it is not clear how far this timetable will hold under new prime minister Rishi Sunak.

At the same time, the sector is facing mounting demand and financial pressures, as it emerges from the pandemic and deals with the impact of the current high rate of inflation.

Child protection enquiries reached record levels in 2021-22, up 10% on the year before, on the back of a 9% rise in referrals to children’s social care, according to DfE figures, while the Association of Directors of Children’s Services has calculated that councils face a shortfall of almost £800m in their children’s services budgets this year.

This has raised serious concerns about the impact of next week’s autumn statement, when chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce £35bn in annual public spendng cuts. These are expected to kick in after the current government spending review period ends in 2025. However, in the meantime, councils will still have to manage with budgets that are lower in real-terms than anticipated at the time of the spending review, in 2021, because of the much higher rate of inflation.