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Children's charities have called on the government to ensure a significant proportion of the new money promised in April's budget is spent on children's services.

The National Children's Bureau, the NSPCC and NCH - backed by the Association of Directors of Social Services - have called for reassurances that the annual 6 per cent real terms growth in resources for social services in England over the next three years will not be swallowed up by adult services, and particularly by bed-blocking.

"We welcome the increased government funding for health and social services, and believe it is vital that a substantial proportion of it is ring-fenced for children," said NCH public policy director Caroline Abraham. "If this doesn't happen it will be a huge missed opportunity that would throw into serious doubt the government's ability to achieve its goal of ending child poverty by 2019."

In response to a parliamentary question by Conservative backbencher Gillian Shephard last month about the proportion of the new funds to be devoted to child protection, health minister Jacqui Smith said, "detailed decisions on the allocation of resources will follow in the autumn".

The only clue so far as to what the government expects the new funds to be spent on came from health secretary Alan Milburn the day after the budget was announced. He promised to legislate "to give councils responsibility from their 6 per cent extra real-term resources for the costs of beds needlessly blocked in hospitals".

But NCB chief executive Paul Ennals said there were "serious concerns" about focusing the vast majority of resources on what is seen as a political priority, adding that politicians were mistaken if they thought the electorate were only concerned about services for older people.

The NSPCC added that its parliamentary supporters had been lobbying the government for more details on how the funding should be spent, and would "push for some of the increased funds to social services to be earmarked for children's services".

Rob Hutchinson, former chairperson of the ADSS children and families committee, said: "Bearing in mind that the ADSS budget survey said that 80 per cent of social services departments were predicting overspends of 2 per cent or more, and of those 72 per cent were overspending because of children's services, it is absolutely necessary that some of the 6 per cent goes to children's services. But there is no mention of that. There is only mention of bed-blocking."