Children's champion warns of cuts

Prof Marshall said children should be the first to receive relief

The recession could cause authorities to reduce services for young people, Children's Commissioner Kathleen Marshall has warned.

On her last day in the job, Professor Marshall said there was already anecdotal evidence that cutbacks were occurring.

She warned: "Children are not just a budget heading.

"We have to make sure the current financial downturn doesn't make things worse."

Prof Marshall said she was aware of "a couple of areas" in which the position of children's rights officer had been abolished.

"It is anecdotal. But that's the problem - by the time we research it the damage will already have been done."

Fast relief

She drew comparisons between the attitude to services for vulnerable children needed now and the approach taken in a charter drawn up during the economic gloom of the 1920s.

She said local authorities should try to live up to two statements included in the League of Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, written in 1924.

"One of them is 'recognising that mankind owes the child the best it has to give', which I think is a strong statement, and the other is that 'the child should be the first to receive relief in time of distress'.

"So I think in this time of economic distress we should be trying to ensure that children are the first to receive relief and that we give them the best we have to give."

Prof Marshall has been Children's Commissioner since 2004, and is to be replaced by Tam Baillie of Barnardo's Scotland next month.

Looking back on her term, she highlighted the reduction of dawn raids involving young asylum seekers as a positive outcome.

She said she would continue to push for new rules requiring judges to consider the impact on children when sentencing a parent after she left office.