Advocacy services may be called upon at the beginning of, or in the course of, child safeguarding processes. Without this support, parents with learning disabilities often find it difficult to participate effectively. We worked with four advocacy services, which together provided information on seventeen case studies. Costs of service provision were calculated for each case based on budget and activity information. Economic consequences of reduced child safeguarding activities were derived for cases in which there was evidence that the involvement of advocacy had changed the outcome. Incremental costs were calculated by comparing this against a vignette, developed from previous research, of a typical child safeguarding process that ends with the child being removed from the parental home.
On average, an advocacy intervention consisted of 95 hours of client-related work and cost £3,040. Potential savings included net benefits of £720 over the course of the intervention (average 9 months) to councils’ social services departments from reduced safeguarding activities, care proceedings and care provision, as well as potential longer-term net benefits of £3,130 due to increased access to interventions such as parenting programmes, benefits (debt) advice, counselling, support for alcohol problems and victim support. There may also be economic impacts for children in their later lives that were not included in our analyses, such as improved school performance. (For example, the cost of a child leaving without school qualifications has been projected to be £58,000.) Full details have been published.