Every council can point to its preventative services. Few can say how much they spend on them.
As demand rises and budgets tighten, prevention has become central to the public service reform agenda. We often talk about the shift that needs to take place – from reacting to problems to preventing them – yet few can describe what that shift involves in financial terms. From a public financial management perspective, the question is not only where we want to end up, but where we are starting from. Without understanding how much is currently invested in prevention, it is impossible to judge the scale of change required or to plan resources with intent.
