Introduction

Reducing the number, type and range of professional staff employed particularly within community and social services, for example more health support workers, poorly paid care workers, more teaching assistants, puts a premium on professional displacement. The bigger picture from an economic standpoint shows that uncertainty over the Brexit outcome in the United Kingdom (UK) has led to some fallen investment, productivity stagnation and a flatlining in consumer spending (Eaton, 2018). Restricting immigration from Europe after Brexit would likely lead to lower growth in total jobs and in the output of the UK economy, according to the government's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC, 2018). This report claims that employers, challenged over the role of wages in their decision to hire migrant workers, often appear in denial that low wages are part of their ‘image problem’ among UK-born workers. Instead, the argument is that businesses employ EU migrants not because they are prepared to accept lower pay and worse conditions but because they are prepared to do work that British workers will not do – providing good quality social care would be a case in point (MAC, 2018).

Children's services have become a prominent example of a rather nebulous policy area as regards interpreting the Conservative government's action and strategy (Narey, 2016). There has been a general consensus among professional bodies that it must provide greater clarity on how it intends to maintain the provision of children's centres (Pre-Learning Alliance/CPAG, 2017). In one major respect a prevailing absence of children's services has become worthy of the term ‘ineffectual’, raising questions about whether local authorities have been meeting their duties to ensure adequate children's centre provision in their area. Sustained funding cuts have forced local councils to undo much of the pioneering work of the previous Labour governments and have forced local councils to shrink their provision to the extent that many remaining centres now offer little more than a skeleton service. In this sense some services may be regarded as ‘ineffective’ if judged against original Sure Start objectives. De-professionalism becomes a filter that resonates, for the reason that although this programme was designed to boost the educational and life chances of socially and economically disadvantaged children, a 62 per cent cut in local council early years spending since 2010 has meant that between 500 and 1,000 Sure Start Centres in England have closed since then (Butler, 2019b).