CUTS of £4.5million will be made to children’s services in Dorset in the next financial year.

Youth services, management costs and education support are among the areas expected to take a hit as the county council works to protect the most vulnerable from the impact of the central government spending review.

Cuts to children’s services, excluding schools, for 2011/12 will include reducing the service to adopted adults seeking contact with birth relatives, support and requests for assessment for step-parent adoption – with savings of £17,000.

In a report to the county council’s cabinet, intended savings include £35,000 by continuing its policy of reduced levels of loyalty payments for foster carers and £100,000 by reducing the range of support services provided to families with children experiencing difficulties.

Cuts to the provision of careers advice and support to 16 to 19-year-olds to find employment or training is expected to save £650,000 while £64,300 will come from a restructure of Dorset Music Service and £40,000 from a review of funding and services to the Youth Offending Team.

Last month shocked staff at The Waves Project were told that Dorset’s children’s services would not renew its £80,000-a-year contract when it expires in March.

The project, which is part of The Children’s Society charity, had been expecting a decrease in county council funding for 2010/11 but not such a knockout blow.

Waves is the biggest provider of family and children’s services in Weymouth and Portland and employs four full-time and five part-time staff plus a team of volunteers.

Staff work with an average of 80 families annually and estimate they will have worked with 700 children and young people, with a variety of problems including suicidal tendencies, for the current year up to March 2011.

It comes as the local authority attempts to make £27million cuts in the next financial year, including 500 jobs losses.

In response to Government announcements so far the Children’s Services directorate has identified £1million of savings as part of the Meeting Future Challenges project and a further £3.5million identified by the council’s budget working group.

Director of Children’s Services John Nash told the Dorset Echo: “Obviously we have to protect as far as possible children and safeguarding work, which is a big chunk of the budget.

“Children in care, children at risk or harm, fostering, adoption and children placed externally in our own children’s homes – the area that might be called social services.

“Which puts pressure on other services.

“We have to look across the wide range we manage – early years, youth services, education support services and direct services to schools, music and outdoor education and all the other stuff we do.”

Mr Nash said: “It looks grim for the council, in the sense it’s going to be very challenging to sustain key services and make the level of savings we have to make.

“But it’s happening across the country.

“To be fair to the councillors, they haven’t specifically targeted children’s services by any means but we have to bear our share.”

Management costs will be ‘strongly reduced’ across a range of services’, the department is also looking at which of its services could be taken over by alternative providers and to renegotiate contracts with national charities including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and Action for Children.

The management cost of youth clubs will be reduced by giving fewer managers ‘a much wider spread of responsibility’.

Councillor Toni Coombes, county council cabinet member for children’s services said a lot of these savings were ‘front loaded’ and happening within the next year, which made it ‘a lot harder’ but they were trying to protect frontline services.

She said: “Rather than be downbeat about it, we’re trying to take a proactive attitude and say if we think about it carefully, this could be a real window of opportunity to shape services so they meet the needs of the future in an efficient way.

“It’s not just about slashing and burning, we want services to be sustainable in the future.

“This is an opportunity to go forward at rapid speed towards that goal.

“We have a reasonable record of working in partnership, that’s something we want to improve on as we go forward.”