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Few genuine believers in social welfare would take issue with the principles underlying the comprehensive spending review, the outcome of which was announced by chancellor Gordon Brown this week. More money for Sure Start, more money for the Children's Fund, and more money for the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund were just some of the components of the £61bn increase in annual spending on public services promised by 2005-6. The 6 per cent annual increase in education spending matched that already promised for social services in the April budget, and will be accompanied by an even more emphatic government focus on child care policy.

Brown unveiled a £1.5bn combined budget for child care, early years education and Sure Start, and promised that local authorities would be given more funding and greater responsibility for the delivery of child care services. Special grants will be awarded to ambitious councils which meet "stretching targets" set out in local public service agreements. While the spending review heralds a much needed expansion of Sure Start, it also offers social services departments a way to make their mark on the social inclusion agenda by developing preventive work with children and families which has been worn away by years of concentration on child protection.

It hardly needs to be said that there were strings attached. The chancellor also made it clear that the rewards offered with one hand will be snatched away with the other where public service providers are deemed to have failed. Yet all of these new proposals are riding on the chancellor's luck. As this week's strike over pay by council workers demonstrates, there are enormous pressures in the public sector for more money to do what it is supposed to do already. Recruitment and retention of staff, fee levels for contracted out services, and the bed-blocking crisis each have a claim on funding which could easily fuel runaway public sector inflation, and there are many other mouths to feed too. All of these claims are just, but they will not always help the chancellor to meet his objectives.

In two years' time, when the proposed Commission for Social Care Inspection begins reporting to parliament on how social care resources are being used, it should be clear whether the chancellor's gamble has paid off. If it does, great. If it does not, it is to be hoped that councils do not pay the price as "failing institutions".

Divisive monitoring

This week saw the announcement of new measures to monitor asylum-seeking children who have no leave to remain in the country. The Home Office has said social workers should be preparing young people in this predicament for a return to their country of origin rather than leaving them to be picked up off the streets.

It is ironic that while young people leaving the care of local authorities can now expect support up until the age of 21, those who arrive seeking asylum are denied any specific services if the Home Office rules they do not fulfil the necessary requirements.

It appears there is one rule for vulnerable children already in the care system and another for those seeking asylum. Yet they are all vulnerable children. To leave your country of origin and travel alone to a new place where you know nobody is a terrifying experience. What you need at the end of the journey is support, not Big Brother watching your every move on the assumption that you are going to bypass the immigration rules.