Children's services across three boroughs will receive a £242 million budget for the upcoming financial year, following approval by the Education and Children's Services Committee.
The budget, allocated to Achieving for Children (AfC), which delivers services for Richmond upon Thames, Kingston, and Windsor and Maidenhead, was confirmed at a meeting on Thursday, March 26, 2026. The total budget for 2026/27 is £242.414 million. Of this, Richmond's contribution amounts to £95.504 million, with Kingston receiving £85.780 million and Windsor and Maidenhead £61.131 million.
This funding aims to support the organisation's strategic priorities, which include ensuring children and young people live safe and healthy lives, have positive futures, and that families are stronger and more resilient. The projected outcomes include supporting children and families to live safe and healthy lives through early intervention, enabling children and young people to achieve meaningful outcomes from birth to adulthood, and supporting families to develop resilience and independence.
The committee also approved AfC's Medium Term Financial Strategy, Treasury Plan, and updated five-year Strategic Plan. The financial strategy aims to achieve sustainability amidst escalating pressures in children's services, focusing on delivering value for money and maximising resources for frontline services. These escalating pressures are attributed to changing demographics and levels of social need, inflationary pressures, shortages of specialist placements and practitioners, systemic underfunding of high needs education services, non-achievement of some savings, increased demand for services, and a reported clear step up in complexity of need
since the pandemic.
If the financial strategy is not fully realised, the expected impacts on sustainability include an affordability gap, reduced service quality, increased reliance on costly interventions, challenges in recruitment and retention, and potential failure to meet statutory duties. The strategy aims to mitigate these risks by ensuring value for money and maximising resources for frontline services. This will be achieved through benchmarking, challenging cost reduction targets, generating income, prioritising funding, transparency, efficient delivery models, and strong commissioning competence. Resources will be maximised for frontline services by aiming for low-cost, high-outcome services, minimising back office costs, digital transformation, demand management, developing local provision, and implementing a robust workforce strategy.
The approved strategic plan outlines four key priorities: Safe and Healthy, Positive Futures, Stronger Families, and Dynamic Organisation. These are underpinned by principles of collaboration, sustainability, value for money, and inclusivity.
Safe and Healthy initiatives include a universal early help offer, edge of care support, a multi-disciplinary Family Help Service, a multi-agency Child Protection Team, a crisis resilience fund, enhanced mental health access for vulnerable children, early support for neurodivergent children, alignment with the national SEND School White Paper, development of local accommodation options, a kinship offer, improved care leaver independence, placement reviews, SEMH provision, and school place planning for SEND.
Positive Futures aims to reduce attainment gaps for disadvantaged pupils, develop local 'Best Start in Life' plans, improve SEND transitions and pathways, and implement the National Youth Strategy.
Stronger Families will focus on the Action Practice framework, co-production for SEND, implementing the government's child poverty strategy, developing family hubs, transforming short break services, and implementing national reforms for affordable childcare.
Dynamic Organisation aims to develop a workforce and organisation tailored to the needs of children, young people, and families. While specific KPIs are not explicitly listed, actions include regular workforce feedback, implementing efficiency reviews, targeted recruitment and professional development to reduce reliance on agency staff, embedding the AfC Academy, ensuring fit-for-future case management systems, improving IT and digital strategy, enhancing cyber resilience, improving information sharing with partners, reviewing commissioning arrangements, and implementing the national outcomes framework. The goal is to have at least 94.4% of the budget spent on frontline services.
Further details on the budget and strategic plans can be found in the Public reports pack for the Education and Children's Services Committee, including the 2026/27 Budget Appendix, the Medium Term Financial Strategy 2026-31, and the Strategic Plan for publication.
