In July last year, Frances and her two children walked out of their family home in south Somerset. Over the previous few years, her husband had been repeatedly violent towards her, and cruel and aggressive to her eldest daughter. The arrival of a new baby seemed to only make things worse. “He would lock my daughter out in the rain; he called our baby the ‘c’ word,” she says. “I can remember her standing between us when she was three, saying ‘Don’t hit my mummy.’”

She had been advised to get out of the home and end the relationship by a family support worker sent to see her by a council-run children’s service called GetSet. “On her third visit to our house,” says Frances, “I told her what had been going on. She wasn’t surprised.” Help came quickly, not only with finding somewhere to live, but also with her finances and her daughter’s levels of anxiety.

'Lost for words': Somerset cuts £28m of help for most vulnerable Read more

Frances remains convinced that without such help, the future would have been unimaginable. “Our support worker saved three lives. If she hadn’t helped, I think my husband would have killed us.”

Somerset’s GetSet service was created in 2014, partly as a rebranded version of SureStart, the early-years programme introduced by the last Labour government. GetSet is split into four levels: 3 and 4 are labelled “complex” and “acute”, whereas the services provided at level 1 – whose definition extends to help from GPs – are “universal”. Level 2 help is aimed at “children, young people and their families who require some extra support or intervention, in addition to what every child receives”. In keeping with one of SureStart’s most fundamental original principles, this a perfect example of a policy of prevention, intended to deal with problems before they turn critical.

The revenue support grant Somerset county council receives from Whitehall has fallen from around £90m to less than £9m, and next year it will disappear completely. The cost of statutory children’s services, such as residential care and adoption, is continuing to rise. Along with such Tory-run local authorities as Norfolk, East Sussex and Lancashire, Somerset is trying desperately to avoid effective bankruptcy. As a result, it is now pursuing a programme of £28m worth of cuts across two years, and large swathes of GetSet are under serious threat.

Three weeks ago, Somerset’s ruling Conservative cabinet agreed to reduce the number of people working at levels 2 and 3 by more than 50%, meaning full-time equivalent job losses of around 62. The council is also due to begin formally consulting on a proposal which would mean the end of level 2 altogether – and, as many local people see it, the final death of SureStart and its legacy in one of England’s largest counties.

Long before all this was announced, evidence of hacked-back children’s services in Somerset was increasingly plain. Over the last few years, the number of officially designated children’s centres in the county – through which many families access services – has fallen from 24 to eight.

It is part of a much bigger national picture, and what many see as a mounting emergency. A recent analysis by the charity Action for Children concluded that spending on early intervention services for children in England has dropped by 26% over the last four years. The number of children’s centres lost since 2010 is estimated to be as high as 1,000. As the prime minister promises “the end of austerity”, many of these changes look irreversible, not least because increasing numbers of councils are facing dire financial problems.

Precisely tracking what is happening across the country is all but impossible, but freedom of information requests lodged by Labour’s shadow minister for early years, the Yorkshire MP Tracy Brabin, give a strong sense of what is going on. In Reading, the last eight years have seen the number of people employed in SureStart work drop from 95 to 53. In Wirral, the number has dropped from 219 to 63; in Southampton, from 1,189 to 583.

‘My worst fear is that a child’s going to die’

The vast majority of Somerset’s GetSet workers are women. Many of them do not just provide direct family support, but also organise the open playgroups that often provide a first point of contact for troubled families. “My worst fear is that a child’s going to die,” says one worker. “When we go into a home, it’s not just about sitting around the kitchen table. There are houses that just aren’t safe. There will be things like knives left around, or cots in positions where things could fall on them. If there’s nobody saying, “Can I look at your child’s bedroom?’ and looking at the home environment, something’s going to go wrong.”

When presented with these concerns, a spokesperson for Somerset county council said support for the more vulnerable families would continue.

“GetSet isn’t the only source of early help support in Somerset,” the spokesperson said. “Lots of different agencies have a role in providing that kind of support and won’t be affected by these proposals. They all have a duty to identify, support and involve other agencies if necessary to support the most vulnerable.

“We’ve made savings of £130m in the last eight years but it’s still not enough … We’ll continue to deliver the very best services possible within the reduced funding [the council has] available, meeting all our statutory duties. Nationally, children’s services are overspent by more than £800m this year, so there is clearly a wider issue that needs to be addressed on a national scale.”

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On Monday, there was a highly charged meeting of the council’s children and families scrutiny committee, where council officers and executives fielded questions about the GetSet cuts. The officers repeated several times that the immediate changes to GetSet were “a reduction in staffing rather than a reduction in service”.

Extensive arguments focused on the accuracy of official figures for referrals to level 2 and the service’s total number of active cases. The committee eventually passed a resolution proposing that the first round of cuts should be reviewed “with a view to deferring its implementation until a wider consultation on the service has been concluded”. This suggestion will be considered by the ruling cabinet next Wednesday, but few believe there is much chance of the cuts being substantially reversed.

‘I’m going to be completely isolated’

Lucy lives in Glastonbury, the Somerset town chiefly famed for the festival that happens seven miles down the road and an abundance of shops selling mystical knick-knacks, but also the home of scores of families experiencing deep problems. She does not drive – a big obstacle in a town without a railway station, and a county where bus services have been cut – and is still experiencing depression and anxiety, partly traceable to her recent split from her partner. GetSet family support workers, she says, have helped her care for two autistic children and provided assistance after her attempts to navigate the universal credit maze resulted in the family running out of money.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Hub in Glastonbury. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

In 2016, her local children’s centre was closed and GetSet services were moved to the town’s new multi-service “Hub”. She says there used to be an affordable playgroup available in the town five days a week, but this is down to just one – and she has been told the GetSet cuts will mean it closes later this year. “I’ll lose all of my connection with advice from people who are very experienced with children’s behaviour,” she says. “I’m going to be completely isolated. There’s a private group available, but it costs £4.50, and you have to pay termly.”

On Tuesday, anxious parents confronted local councillors at a public meeting with their concerns about the cuts. “Their advice to us was: ‘We can help you access grants to start your own playgroups,’” she says. “My response was: ‘Who’s going to run it? Who has the time? Or the training? Who’s going to take on that responsibility?’ They didn’t seem to have any answers.”

• Some names have been changed.