Briefing
February 2016
166
Children’s Social Care Reform – A Vision for Change
The Department for Education (DfE) published its vision for children’s social care reform in January
2016. The publication was supported by speeches from the Prime Minister and Secretary of State
for Education. The work is being led by the cross government taskforce on child protection which
is chaired by the secretary of state for education. This level of interest and priority to children’s
social care and child protection is almost unprecedented, especially when taken alongside the
priority being given to adoption and adoption reform. This briefing describes the vision for
change, its key components and makes some comments on the wider context into which the
vision and reform programme are launched
The Vision
The programme recognises that children’s social care is about changing lives and that it can both
improve lives and transform them. The Government wants every child to be able to fulfil their
potential and sees children’s social care as having an essential role to play in fulfilling this aim,
especially for the most vulnerable children i.e. those in need of protection, children in care. The
vision requires everyone working within children’s social care to have the knowledge and skills
required to do their jobs well and that there is the organisational leadership and culture to
support and challenge them to keep improving.
The vision says that by 2020:
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There will be a workforce with the knowledge and skills to do this complex work supported
by robust assessment of their knowledge and skills and accreditation;
Professionals will confidently shape practice and not government;
There will be a more diverse range of children’s social care organisations whose
performance is driven by “challenging, sharp and practice-focused accountability.”
The Government says that they have made progress with this programme of reform through
reform of child protection, adoption and reducing bureaucracy together with the investment in
the innovation programme. The document sets out the new reform programme under the
headings of:
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People and Leadership;
Practice and Systems;
Governance and Accountability.
People and Leadership
The reform programme puts development of a highly skilled and expert children’s social care
workforce as the crucial ingredient to deliver excellent services to children and families. It says “It
is only through rigorous training, developing and supporting workers across these professions that
we can truly achieve the change we need for children.”
Social workers are seen as the profession carrying the heaviest burden of responsibility as they
hold the statutory responsibility for keeping children safe and making the right decision about
their future. The vision statement recognises how difficult this work is which is why it restates the
need for social workers to have high quality supervision and practice leadership. This leads to the
need for every area to have a senior social work Practice Leader “who holds full responsibility for
day to day operations and what happens to children and their families.”
The vision sets out the link between the aspirations described above and the reforms which
include:
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Clear statements of the necessary knowledge and skills for children’s social work;
A reformed system to create and maintain rigorously high standards of professional
excellence;
Bringing the best and the brightest into social work and supporting the development of
their skills.
The actions to deliver these reforms include:
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Expanding Frontline and Step Up programmes to bring more excellent practitioners in via
work based graduate training and expansion of Teaching Partnerships between universities
and employers;
Rolling out a national system of assessment and accreditation to guarantee the practice
skill of every practitioner at every level of seniority. The process for this is being trialled
now with practitioners from a number of local authorities;
Creating a coherent and rigorous pathway for social workers from practitioner to practice
leader;
Investment in developing leadership talent;
Establish a new regulatory body for social work with a relentless focus on raising the
quality of social work, education, training and practice in both children’s and adult’s social
work.
Challenges
There is a great deal in this programme which is exciting and positive for children’s social work. It
recognises the very complex and difficult job which children’s social workers undertake and that
the current training and development for children’s social workers does not always prepare them
well enough for the work. The programme reflects the messages from Professor Eileen Munro’s
review of children protection that the work needs to be professionally based with less focus on
following process and more on the exercise of judgment based on skilled information gathering
and analysis with social workers once more seeing themselves using their skills as agents of
change in people’s lives.
What is currently unclear is resolution of the gap between where we are now and where the
vision says we should be by 2020. The latest data on the children’s social work workforce up to
30th September 2014 shows a vacancy rate of 15%, 1% higher than September 2013. Most
vacancies are covered by agency staff. The vacancy rates are often much higher than this in the
most pressed parts of the service such as assessment and child protection teams, and in many
local authorities. The average vacancy rate in outer London Boroughs is 27%. Data collection is
being improved though it is unlikely that the detail needed about roles, time in the workforce,
destinations of leavers, where new recruits come from etc. will be available until 2017.
Practice and Systems
The vision statement reiterates the criticism Professor Munro made in her 2011 review of child
protection that she found a system which was “doing things right rather than doing the right
thing.”
The vision says that “we need to free up excellent frontline social workers and their leaders to
focus on the needs of children and families.” The analogy is drawn with the Academies
programme and how the government is working to free up the best teachers and school leaders.
To deliver the change the vision seeks to:
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Set out a clear regulatory framework but not overreach by prescribing practice for frontline
professionals. The Government plans to roll back unnecessary regulations and guidance.
The vision statement references, the reduction by 700 pages, of child protection guidance
and the removal of “distorting” timescales which were set during the last parliament;
Support innovators as the Government sees less innovation in this sector than other
comparable sectors. It appears most areas feel unable to take measured risks. The
innovation programme is helping change this and the vision statement wants to see a
fundamental cultural shift to promote innovation;
Develop a Partners in Practice programme where the best performing local authorities
help show the whole system what can be achieved when practice is designed around a
focus on children and families;
Improve the system for learning when things go wrong by overhauling the system for the
serious case review (SCR) process;
Develop a “What works” centre.
Challenges
The reduction of Working Together to Safeguard Children to focus on the core requirements of the
child in need and child protection process was widely welcomed. This change in approach has, and
continues to be, reflected in the way tri.x is revising how procedures and guidance are presented
to practitioners. The approach of presenting core process, key facts on a particular topic i.e.
Female Genital Mutilation and reference to more detailed practice guidance works well for
practitioners.
To date, the volume of recording and report writing required from social workers has yet to be
reduced. Data requirements remain onerous for children in need including those with child
protection plans and looked after children.
The development of more focus on learning from the best local authorities and from what works is
wholly to be welcomed. What is not yet clear is how the process for serious case reviews is to be
reformed other than it will at least in part be centralised. It is as yet unclear how a centralised
system will inform local learning, often the most powerful form of learning from SCRs, or that it
will reveal more about what the issues are than the series of biennial reviews of SCRs produced by
the University of East Anglia team led by Professor Marian Brandon.
Governance and Accountability
The Government wants the reforms driven forward by “dynamic children’s social care
organisations”. It wants to see failing organisations turned around quickly. The vision statement
describes how in some areas such as foster care and residential care there have been a diverse
range of providers of services for many years. It recognises that there are effective and innovative
local authority services but regrets that these services have not been able to spread their
influence to other areas or support improvement elsewhere.
The recent developments of Children’s Trusts to deliver services at arm’s length from the local
authority and combined authority models are described. The advantages of working outside the
local authority are seen as the chance to focus with absolute clarity of purpose on children’s social
care.
There are recent developments of partnering of ‘good’ local authorities with authorities in
intervention.
The vision statement is critical of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) as not sufficiently
driving improvement.
The proposals made are to:
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Streamline checks and balances to ensure a sharper focus on accountability and making
better use of data to drive performance;
Support collective arrangements between local authorities for commissioning or delivering
excellent services e.g. the development of regional adoption agencies;
Support the emergence of not for profit children’s social care organisations as part of a
more dynamic and diverse range of provision;
Intervene strongly in cases of failure to secure rapid improvement including allowing the
best local services to take over the “poorest”;
Work with Ofsted so that any new inspection framework supports innovation and evidence
based social work practice and review and improve local arrangements for coordination
and accountability including the role of LSCBs.
Challenges
As yet there is little detail about some of these proposals and some, such as the future of LSCBs,
awaits a current review. There is benefit in local authorities working together to commission and
deliver services, especially those where scale is needed to either deliver economies or to ensure
the right levels of expertise are available.
The development of trust and not for profit bodies to deliver children’s social care services outside
of the local authority appears to be the preferred solution for those local authorities where
services are judged inadequate over a long period of time, though it is too early to judge whether
the first examples will make the difference.
The work of partnering good local authorities with weaker local authorities is already underway
and reflect the benefits of sector led improvement which has the potential to achieve change in
depth which more short term interventions by specialist consultants may not achieve.
Conclusion
The vision for reform of children’s social care has many positive elements. The determination of
the government to improve children’s social care is apparent however, the programme is unclear
about resources and the implementation of this programme against a backdrop of deteriorating
social conditions for very many children and their families.
The Government has commented in other places, such as the Memorandum from the DfE to the
Education Select Committee enquiry on social work reform, that “There are sizeable variations in
quality across the country, and currently no clear correlation between spend and outcomes.”
There are examples of authorities that have resolved difficulties by making additional investment
in their workforce.
There are many examples where improvement can be linked to investment, though given the
pressures on local authorities it is difficult to envisage how the vision for children’s social care can
be realised, especially in those areas facing the greatest recruitment and retention problems and
the greatest increase in need, without substantial additional investment.
Contact Us
To find out more about working with tri.x contact us on: Telephone: 024 7667 8053 or visit our
website www.trixonline.co.uk
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