SERVICES for children in the North-East and Yorkshire have been the subject of huge funding cuts in the last nine years, charities have joined forces to warn today.

Funding for children’s services has been slashed by a third in the region since 2010, five major children’s charities say, with Yorkshire and the North-East seeing the highest cuts outside London.

Middlesbrough is the worst-hit area after Newcastle, with money per child cut by 37 per cent, with cuts in Hartlepool at 35 per cent.

Action for Children has joined forces with the Children’s Society, NSPCC, National Children’s Bureau and Barnardo’s to highlight the scale of the funding cuts to vital services which can stop thousands of families falling in to crisis.

Yorkshire was the second worst-hit region in the UK, with the North-East a close third, after the charities identified “kids’ cuts hotspots” where councils had faced the biggest real-term drop in funding.

More than 1,000 children’s centres have closed since 2009 while 760 youth centres have shut since 2012.

Julie Bentley, chief executive at Action for Children, said: “Children’s services are at breaking point and these alarming figures reveal the true scale of the devastating and dangerous funding cuts made year after year by successive governments.”

Redcar and Cleveland saw funding cut by 33 per cent, Stockton and Durham County 32 per cent and Darlington 24 per cent.

North Yorkshire saw the smallest funding drop but was still down 18 per cent.

Stockton South Labour MP Paul Williams, who chairs the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee and has been calling for better support specifically for infant children, said: “I want our area to be the best place in the world for children to be born into.

“But the Government are letting our children down by cutting early childhood services. It makes no sense, as this is the best time to invest in children and their families.”

He said he wanted to see “urgent national leadership, supported by proper investment” to enable the NHS, councils and other public bodies to work together to give “every child the best possible start in life”.

Councillor Cyndi Hughes, Darlington Borough Council’s cabinet member for children’s services, said cuts were having a knock-on effect on other areas, with an increase in anti-social behaviour as well as the number of children in care rising by about ten per cent.

She said: “Tough decisions over prioritisation have meant that despite massive central government cuts, we’ve maintained spending on core services for children and young people. Much else, however, has had to be reduced or fall by the wayside.

“Some might think that council spending on services like youth clubs, children’s centres and afterschool activities are unnecessary extras but cuts to those services fuel anti-social behaviour, inequality and create growing and unnecessary social problems for the future.“This Government’s fiscal short-termism has the potential to blight a generation and will undoubtedly cost much more in human and monetary terms to put right in the years ahead.”

Minister for Children and Families Nadhim Zahawi said: “We want every child to have the best start in life, with the opportunities and the stability to fulfil their potential, which is why we have made £200 billion available to councils up to 2020 for local services including those for children and young people. 

“The government announced £84 million in evidence-based interventions which will help to reduce demand, saving money for local authorities, as well as providing a further £270 million for councils to develop improvements in their services.

“The number of local children’s services rated outstanding is growing, and the number rated inadequate has dropped by a third since 2017 – from 30 down to 19. By 2022, I want this reduced to fewer than 10 per cent of councils, and we are on track to meet this.”