Kent’s Childhood Lottery: £23.20 a Year, and a Generation Falling Through the Cracks

£23.20.

That’s how much Kent County Council (KCC) reported spending on youth services in 2024/25 for every young person aged between 13 and 19. Not £23.20 a week. Not a month. For the entire year.

The middle figure among English councils was £92. Kent’s was barely a quarter of that.

Meanwhile, children were missing education, teenagers were struggling to find work or training, and youngsters in care were having to adjust to a revolving door of social workers. Not quite the Garden of England childhood you might imagine.

These are among the findings buried in the Children’s Commissioner’s new report, The Childhood Lottery: The Hardest Places to Grow Up in England, published in October 2026. It examines 162 measures of childhood, covering everything from family life and education to health, safety, care and opportunities for young people.

And here’s the curious thing.

Kent looks reassuringly ordinary in the overall results. It scores 584 points against an England average of 585, placing it 81st among 153 local authorities. Virtually bang in the middle. Nothing much to worry about, you might think.

Except averages have a habit of concealing uncomfortable truths.

The £23.20 question

Youth services aren’t an optional luxury for children whose parents can afford to entertain them. They’re somewhere to meet friends, try new activities, find encouragement, learn skills and sometimes escape difficulties at home.

Yet the Commissioner’s figures show KCC’s reported expenditure on youth services was just £23.20 per teenager in 2024/25. The national median was £92. This includes expenditure recorded under the Department for Education’s youth-services category, rather than every penny spent on young people across all council departments.

Spending alone doesn’t tell us whether services are good. Volunteers, charities and other organisations may provide excellent activities outside the council’s expenditure figures. Some funding may also be recorded elsewhere.

Nevertheless, when one council reports spending roughly 75% less per teenager than the national median, residents are entitled to ask why.

There’s another uncomfortable finding. In its 2025 responses to the Children’s Commissioner, KCC reported that it didn’t provide a youth hub or a youth club or centre under the survey’s definitions. It also reported no targeted youth group for children from low-income families, LGBTQ+ youngsters or Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children.

That doesn’t mean no youth clubs, charities or community organisations exist in Kent. It means the council didn’t identify those forms of provision in its responses.

KCC did report a youth council and targeted support for young carers and children with special educational needs. That’s welcome. But having a voice in decisions isn’t the same as having somewhere safe to go on a Friday evening.

There’s a political distinction worth making. The £23.20 figure relates to 2024/25, before Reform UK took control of KCC in May 2025. The present administration cannot be blamed for setting that historical level of expenditure. But more than a year after taking office, it can certainly explain what has changed, what it’s funding now and whether young people are better served.

The children missing from education

School should be one of the certainties of childhood.

Yet the Commissioner’s figures show 2.26% of Kent’s children aged five to 16 were recorded as missing education during 2024/25, compared with 1.6% nationally.

That’s approximately one in 44 children over the reporting year.

These aren’t simply youngsters who missed a lesson, stayed home with a cold or bunked off for an afternoon. The official definition concerns children of compulsory school age who aren’t registered at school and aren’t otherwise receiving suitable education. Some may be awaiting school places. Others may have fallen out of the education system altogether.

The Commissioner acknowledges that councils haven’t always used the definition consistently, which complicates comparisons. But the underlying safeguarding concern remains. KCC has a legal duty to identify children missing education, as far as possible, and help ensure they receive suitable education.

What happened to these children? How long were they missing? How many returned to education, and how many remained outside it? Those are questions KCC should be able to answer.

The difficulties don’t necessarily end at 16.

In 2026, 4.8% of Kent’s 16- and 17-year-olds were not in education, employment or training, compared with 3% nationally. That’s 60% above the national rate.

Oddly enough, Kent scores well for the availability of post-16 education settings, with 1.8 establishments per 1,000 children against 1.2 nationally. There are apparently more places to learn, yet a higher proportion of youngsters outside education and training.

That doesn’t automatically mean college places are available where they’re needed, or that the right courses exist. Distance, transport, disabilities, qualifications and personal circumstances all matter. But it’s a contradiction worth investigating.

And there is good news. Kent’s permanent exclusion rate in mainstream schools was just two pupils per 10,000, compared with 12.5 nationally. Its GCSE results were slightly above average too, with 46.1% achieving grade 5 or better in English and maths against 45.4% nationally. Schools and education staff deserve recognition for those results.

For children needing additional support, 56.9% of Education, Health and Care Plans were completed within the usual 20-week statutory period, compared with 46.4% nationally. Again, better than the England figure. But it still means more than four in ten weren’t completed within that period. Parents waiting for help will understandably be less impressed by the comparison.

Children in care: one success, several warning signs

For a child who’s already experienced upheaval, familiar faces matter. So does staying close to friends, schools and family where that’s safe and appropriate.

On this measure, Kent performs particularly well.

Only 21.5% of looked-after children were placed outside the county in 2025, against 49.2% nationally. Kent was among England’s best-performing authorities. That’s a genuine achievement worth recognising.

But there’s a catch. The dataset shows 24.2% of placement-distance information was unknown or unreported, compared with 8.9% nationally.

That doesn’t mean KCC doesn’t know where those children are. It means the published information isn’t complete enough to give a reliable picture of how far every child is from home. And in a county as large as Kent, being placed within the boundary doesn’t necessarily mean being placed nearby.

Then there’s the question of stability.

More than one in four Kent children in care — 26.5% — experienced three or more social workers during 2024/25. The national figure was 24%. Meanwhile, 11.7% of Kent’s looked-after children had three or more care placements during 2025, compared with 10% nationally.

Imagine having to explain painful personal experiences to someone you’ve only just met. You begin to trust them. Then they leave, and another social worker arrives. A few months later, perhaps another.

That’s not a claim that every change is avoidable or harmful. But continuity matters, particularly for children who’ve already experienced uncertainty.

Kent’s reported social-worker turnover was 24% in 2025, compared with the national workforce rate of 11.8%. The Commissioner also gives a different comparison — an unweighted average of 21.7% across councils — so the figures mustn’t be muddled. Nevertheless, Kent’s staff turnover and children’s repeated changes of social worker need an explanation.

Leaving care brings different challenges. Just 84.5% of Kent’s care leavers aged 17 to 21 were recorded in suitable accommodation, below the national figure of 89%. And 40.3% weren’t in education, employment or training, broadly in line with an already troubling national figure of 40%.

The council reported specialist support, a Children in Care Council and access to independent advocacy. Those are important provisions. The test is whether vulnerable young people can obtain effective help when they need it, not simply whether a service appears on a form.

Healthcare: children aren’t convinced they’re getting what they need

One of the most troubling findings comes directly from young people.

In the Commissioner’s 2024 Big Ambition survey, 18.93% of Kent respondents aged 12 to 18 disagreed that they had access to good healthcare.

Kent ranked 150th out of 153 authorities on that measure.

That’s a survey result, not a measurement of NHS treatment failures. It tells us how children responding to the survey perceived their experiences. Their concerns deserve to be investigated, rather than dismissed because they aren’t contained in an NHS performance spreadsheet.

Other figures reinforce the need for questions. Only 52.6% of Kent’s children were recorded as having attended an NHS dental appointment in the previous year, against 57% nationally. Kent also had 1.9 school nurses per 10,000 children and young people aged five to 19, compared with 3.2 nationally.

These services don’t all sit under KCC’s direct control. NHS providers and commissioners have responsibilities too.

But to a child experiencing anxiety, struggling to see a dentist or needing someone to talk to, the division between county councils and the NHS is hardly reassuring. They need help, not a lesson in administrative boundaries.

Kent’s successes deserve recognition

There is a danger in concentrating so heavily on failure that we overlook what’s working.

Kent completed development reviews for 92% of eligible children aged two to two-and-a-half, compared with 80.8% nationally. Around 69.1% of schools reported providing wraparound childcare against 63% nationally, while 40% reported a dedicated staff member supporting young carers, compared with 27% nationally.

Kent also compares favourably on access to play areas, libraries and public leisure facilities. Its childhood vaccination coverage is above the England benchmark for the measures included in the Commissioner’s dataset.

Those are worthwhile achievements. Behind them are people delivering services, schools making extra efforts and communities providing opportunities for children. The county should build on those strengths rather than lose them while tackling its weaknesses.

One county, many different childhoods

Perhaps the most important limitation of the report is geographical.

The figures describe Kent as one county. They don’t tell us how experiences differ between Folkestone and Hythe, Thanet, Dover, Canterbury, Ashford, Swale and the rest of Kent.

A child growing up in a deprived coastal neighbourhood may have very different opportunities from one growing up in an affluent village. An average for Kent can conceal both.

Housing illustrates the problem. The Commissioner’s figures show 78 children per 10,000 living in temporary accommodation in Kent in 2025. That’s below the England figure of 147, which is encouraging. But the separate homelessness-relief figures show significant difficulties for families whose councils’ relief duties ended without their homelessness being resolved.

District councils handle much of the homelessness system, while KCC has responsibilities for education, children’s social care and other county-wide services.

Without district-level analysis, we can’t establish whether children in Folkestone and Hythe face the same circumstances as children elsewhere in the county. Nor can we reasonably attribute every county-wide outcome to KCC.

There’s another qualification. The Commissioner explicitly says the report is “not a review of the local authority”. It combines information covering different periods and services, including factors beyond councils’ control. The overall ranking mustn’t be misrepresented as a formal judgement on KCC’s competence.

But nor should that qualification become an excuse for inaction.

The questions Kent’s leaders must answer

The Commissioner has called the national situation a “national emergency” and proposed a Children’s Emergency Fund to help raise services to minimum acceptable standards. She also wants greater local accountability for children’s outcomes.

For KCC’s Reform UK administration, that presents a challenge. How much is the county spending on youth services now? Why were so many children recorded as missing education? What is being done to retain social workers and reduce repeated changes for children in care? And what measurable improvements can residents expect?

The NHS must answer questions about access to healthcare, dentistry and mental-health support. District councils must explain the pressures facing homeless families. Schools, charities and families also have important roles, but they cannot be expected to compensate indefinitely for gaps in public provision.

There are positives in this report, and Kent deserves credit for them. Low permanent exclusions, relatively few out-of-county care placements and strong early-childhood development reviews show that improvement is possible.

Yet those achievements cannot cancel out the difficulties facing other children.

The problem with averages is that they make it terribly easy to overlook the people beneath them. Kent’s score of 584 may look perfectly respectable beside England’s 585.

But a child without suitable education, a teenager who cannot find support, or a youngster in care waiting to meet yet another social worker isn’t living an average. They’re living the consequences.

And those responsible for children’s services owe them considerably more than an average answer.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime