Call for review to recognise the factors in risk-averse practice

When the Care Review’s first report, The Case for Change, was published last month, social workers and leaders were quick to hit out at chair Josh MacAlister’s conclusion that child protection practice is often “too risk averse”.

“At present the system is under significant strain: more families are being investigated, more children are in care and costs are spiralling as money is increasingly spent on crisis intervention,” it states, calling for increased focus on early help for families.

This call is supported by latest analysis, commissioned by children’s charities Barnardo’s, Action for Children, NSPCC, National Children’s Bureau and The Children’s Society, which shows that council spending on early intervention services for families fell from £3.6bn in 2010 to £1.8bn in 2020.

The charities’ figures reveal that children in the most disadvantaged areas have been worst hit, with a 59 per cent drop in funding for early help over the last decade. The fall in the least deprived council areas was 38 per cent.

The Case for Change cites growing child poverty and funding cuts as factors contributing to challenges within the children’s social care sector.

However, experts say such issues have been raised for decades, blaming historic factors for a “crumbling system”.
While McAlister points out that “social workers have to make complex and challenging decisions”, he highlights that “when the state steps in, too often the focus is on assessment and investigation, not support”.

“Process continues to dominate over direct work with families, and decision making and risk assessment are too often underpinned by a lack of knowledge,” The Case for Change states, adding that in the year to March 2020 around 135,000 investigations where a child was suspected of suffering significant harm did not result in a child protection plan – three times as many as 10 years ago.

However, in their submission to the review’s call for evidence on The Case for Change, a group of children’s services leaders from North East councils contest that there is an “over reliance” on qualified social workers to deliver the envisaged shift to early help services at the expense of the wider children’s services workforce (see below).

“The Case for Change is quite a descriptive document, it’s describing what are actually symptoms of a number of root causes,” says Professor Brid Featherstone, from the University of Huddersfield.

“It’s too simplistic to say this is about turning practice around because it’s not, it’s about turning a ship around that has a whole range of factors feeding into it,” Featherstone adds. To illustrate this, she cites a push in 2012 by then Education Secretary Michael Gove toward increased child protection measures, a decade of austerity and the introduction of the Children and Social Work Act in 2017.

“I think there’s a whole range of things going on that have unfortunately led to a very simplistic message coming out of The Case for Change that social workers are risk averse,” she says.

“There have been many complex and confusing messages that people on the ground have had to try and manage. Ultimately, poor system design is often a rational response to the constraints in which people find themselves, both the practitioners and the managers.”

Risk aversion

Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), says that while she does not disagree with MacAlister’s comments on risk aversion, “the system is driving an expectation that no risk is left unseen”.

Ramsden adds that the message put forward in The Case for Change led social workers to feel “they were being falsely accused”, saying that increased risk aversion often comes from “the pressure that has come from that wider system, from Ofsted reports and government expectations”.

“Our greatest appetite is to live with managed risk well,” she says, “if we know a situation well then we need to be able to work with a family, understand the risks and manage those effectively. Where we don’t know families, we can’t not check risks out.”

The government has yet to commit substantial funding to deliver The Case for Change recommendations, which are due to be published in spring 2022, however the report states: “There is no situation in the current system where we will not need to spend more.”

It adds that the cost of children’s social care “is escalating and funding is increasingly skewed towards acute services and away from effective help”, reiterating calls for a focus on early help services rather than late intervention.

The children’s charities’ report on early help funding contains analysis showing government funding for council children’s services fell 24 per cent, from £9.9bn in 2010/11 to £7.5bn in 2019/20. This, it states, “is a major factor in the reduction to early help budgets”.

Featherstone raises concerns that funding may be “moved around” to fund early help services rather than increased to improve a failing system.

“Poor system design is intimately related to funding,” she says, adding that “bewilderingly complex” systems are created with local authorities because of the lack of resources.

“There is rationality to it when you have reduced funding,” she adds.

“They’ve taken so much money out of the system, it isn’t just a simple matter of saying change your practices, stop taking so many kids into care and then you’ll have enough money for early help.”

In a recent blog, Kathy Evans, chief executive of Children England, writes that while The Case for Change acknowledges that children’s services budgets are “under severe pressure”, “it gets nowhere close to the scale of the problem”.

The impact of poverty

Featherstone believes a focus on child protection investigations stems from policies which “disconnect” child protection with poverty.

“Since 2010, this government and previous manifestations have been saying poverty has nothing to do with child protection, austerity has nothing to do with child protection,” she says.

Featherstone adds that a change in practice geared towards early help could improve services for families but says “you need to tackle the rest of the factors as well and this government resolutely denied the connection for quite a long time between poverty and rates of child maltreatment”.

“The Case for Change doesn’t repeat that denial but it doesn’t really take on the implications of it either,” she says.

Biggest challenge

Ramsden adds that poverty will be the “biggest challenge facing children’s social care departments over the next five years”, saying The Case for Change’s “recognition of poverty and how that’s really driving the system” will be “helpful” in tackling this.
Evans adds: “Unless the causal factors of today’s child welfare inequalities are accurately named in the course of this review, the solutions arrived at could fail to hit their mark and will risk repeating rather than changing our history.”
Speaking at the ADCS’s annual conference, MacAlister admitted that his message around risk aversion had “landed badly” with some professionals.
Yet, The Case for Change has been praised by others for bringing issues, such as lack of funding and poverty, to the fore.
Dubbed as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” on its launch, social work leaders are now waiting to see if a “simplistic” document will lead to reforms which successfully re-engineer a “flawed” system.

• The Case for Change from https://childrenssocialcare.independent-review.uk/case-for-change/

North East directors call for greater focus on wider children’s services workforce

A “more diverse and better skilled” children’s social work workforce is “essential” to developing new practice, says a submission to the Care Review from a group of children’s services leaders from North East councils.

The submission criticises the “unacceptable variation in the quality of newly qualified social workers”, stating that many are “not sufficiently equipped” to deal with partnership working including working with schools and mixed placement providers.
The 12 directors of children’s services at North East region councils are calling for the social work curriculum to be updated with greater focus on such partnerships as well as improved inductions for newly qualified social workers.

Career pathways for social workers should also be more “clearly defined”, similar to teaching, according to the DCSs’ report, which raises concerns that social work “is seen as a second-class profession”.“A national approach to raising the profile and status of children’s social work is needed and could contribute to celebrating our workforce more,” the report states.

It adds that there is an “over reliance” on qualified social workers to deliver the early help services called for in The Case for Change.

“Youth workers, family workers and others, can work alongside families, potentially for a long time, providing hugely valuable help. A broader range of roles, properly trained and supported, is needed to enable a shift towards early and longer-term help,” it adds.
However, it goes on to state that “there is a surprising lack of knowledge about children in care and their needs across the wider children’s workforce, including in schools,” highlighting the need for investment in training for school staff, police and health care staff in signposting care for vulnerable children.

Among recommendations made to the Care Review, the North East DCSs suggest creating an integrated workforce with “new fluid and hybrid roles” and national approaches to develop managers at every level.

“Regional improvement and innovation alliances should be funded to enable training and development and to oversee sufficiency,” it states.