DfE report proposes 'forced privatisation' of child protection services
Neil Puffett
Friday, December 2, 2016
Councils should be compelled to outsource children's services including child protection work as part of efforts to improve standards, a government-commissioned report has suggested.
The study, which was commissioned by children's minister Edward Timpson in March 2014 to assess the potential for developing the "capacity and diversity" of children's social care provision, states that there is a "clear appetite" among potential service suppliers to take on "the more high-risk areas of service".
It suggests that the government could follow overseas examples and regulate to require certain services to be outsourced to a third party outside of state government. However, the Department for Education has distanced itself from some of the findings.
The report states: "This could commence with the outsourcing of those services where there is already an established market, such as fostering placements, residential placements and adoption services, extending into other areas of provision."
In time the scope could be extended by "requiring all social care services to be outsourced to a third party outside of local government".
While this could include child protection in England, the report notes that no international examples of countries going this far could be found.
The report also highlights the "need for a step change in commissioning practices", and proposes that a National Children's Social Care Commissioning Board is created.
"We are convinced that opening up the market to competition must be complemented by an effective programme to support and develop local commissioning capacity," the report states.
"Simple exhortation to commission better will not in our view achieve significant change."
The Department for Education has taken the unusual step of issuing a government response to the report.
"This is an independent report and, in a number of areas, it goes beyond government policy," the response states.
"For instance, it sets out an option for how regulation might compel all local authorities to outsource all or a proportion of services. We will not be implementing this option."
"We want to support improvement by freeing up good local authorities to be innovative with the solutions they put in place, not by compelling them to outsource.
"We therefore reject those options which would either centralise the delivery of children's social care services, such as the option to establish a National Children's Social Care Commissioning Board, or allow profit-making organisations to deliver them."
The report, which was produced by consultancy firm LaingBuisson and overseen by an advisory panel including chief social worker Isabelle Trowler, former president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services Alan Wood, and economics professor Julian Le Grand, concludes that it is hard to envisage how significant additional capacity and diversity could be created "without more services being exposed to market forces".
"Subject to central government policy change, there is appetite within the independent (for-profit and not-for-profit) sector in most parts of the country to respond to any tenders that local authorities may issue for small- to medium-sized segments of the full range of social care services, so long as these are free from the administrative and bureaucratic burdens characterised by current local government procurement regimes," the report states.
CYP Now has previously attempted to obtain a copy of the report via a Freedom of Information request, but the DfE refused to release it, stating that it was scheduled for publication in summer 2016.
The government has recently been accused of attempting to pave the way for privatisation of children's social care via the controversial so-called "exemption clause" of the Children and Social Work Bill.
Education Secretary Justine Greening has publicly defended the proposal, which would allow councils to apply to be exempted from their statutory duties relating to children's social care, stating "it is not, and never was, about the privatisation of child protection services".
But the government suffered a defeat on the plans last month when the House of Lords passed an amendment removing the proposed legislation from the bill.
