High needs. It’s a problem – an almost impossible problem. Ask many directors of finance what their biggest risk is and, it won’t be adult social care or children’s social care, it will be high needs.

High needs has the potential to bankrupt councils. Despite this, over the last year in particular, the pressures in high needs funding, giving rise to accumulating and accelerating deficits, has been put to one side. Maybe this is not surprising in the middle of a global pandemic, but it needs to be brought back to the fore and tackled before it is too late.