Austerity, Poverty, and Children’s Services Quality in England: Consequences for Child Welfare and Public Services

In England, the dominant policy narrative recognises no association between spending on children’s services and quality a limited deprivation. We combined 374 inspection outcomes 2011 2019 with data preventative safeguarding expenditure Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores. A multilevel logistic regression model predicting ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ judgements suggests each £100 increase in per child was associated 69 cent (95 CI: 27.5 cent, 124 cent) odds positive inspection. one-decile deprivation 16 −25 −5.7 decrease. Safeguarding not outcomes. Deprived communities have worse access to good-quality government policies that increased poverty retrenched likely exacerbated this inequality. Further, inattention socioeconomic context inspections raises concerns about their use ‘take over’ policies.