Cllr Les Lawrence, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, said frontline services to children would be protected as much as possible under the Council’s efficiency drive.
In particular, Cllr Lawrence stressed the necessary investments in children’s social care would continue.
Efficiencies will be made through services such as school support moving towards a more business-orientated model where individual schools or clusters of schools bought in expertise commissioned, but not delivered, by the authority.
Birmingham City Council’s ground-breaking shift in focus towards early intervention and preventative work in children’s services would also be accelerated.
Cllr Lawrence said: “In common with all City Council services, the Children, Young People and Families portfolio faced a difficult budget this year.
“What has been essential is the need to protect the core frontline services we provide. Our priority for the 2010/11 budget was to protect children’s social care and we have done that.
“Other services are to be provided on more of a commissioning basis which is only proper as schools move towards greater autonomy.”
Cllr Lawrence said it was essential that services prepared to operate even more efficiently in years to come.
“The size of the financial envelope for the next year will be a very significant challenge and we need to work with colleagues across the country to see how we can deliver services differently.
“I am determined to protect next year the investment we are making in moving services towards early intervention. We are investing £23 million in that over a 15 year period and we may have to accelerate many of the programmes most of which are showing success already.”
Cllr Lawrence said schools needed to move towards more “co-operative” arrangements which would allow for more cost-effective buy-in of services.
“We have to ensure the services we have traditionally provided are highly effective, efficient and delivered on a self-sufficient basis,” he said.
“The city can no longer afford to subsidise these services. We have to be more of a facilitating body and less of a direct deliverer.”
Cllr Lawrence said this would involve some areas of work operating within the voluntary sector, for example as charitable organisations, with services being commissioned by the local authority.
“That direction of travel has already started to occur under the previous Government and with the new Government that has been accelerated.”
Cllr Lawrence said he was committed to ensuring the public were informed how his department was allocating funding.
“I think the public have a right to see every aspect of our budget, the challenges that arise, the nature of the services we have provided and are providing.
“As head of service, I have to make some difficult decisions and I think it is right and proper for the public to have access to this information.”
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