ADCS president warns of lack of learning from innovation programme
Neil Puffett
Monday, March 27, 2017
Efforts to improve practice in children's social care through the government's £300m innovation programme are being hindered because information about what works isn't being shared effectively, the incoming president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services has warned.
Speaking to CYP Now, Alison Michalska, who officially takes over from current president Dave Hill on 1 April, said that one of her priorities for the coming year is to "mobilise knowledge", so that all local authorities understand how to achieve the best outcomes.
She specifically wants to make progress on how learning from the Department for Education's innovation programme is disseminated.
Initially announced by children's minister Edward Timpson in October 2013, £100m was set aside for projects in the first two years. It is worth a further £200m for the four-year period 2016 to 2020.
"There has been lots of intervention money," Michalska said.
"Some projects have been good, while others haven't worked, but we have got to get that learning out so local authorities know what they need to be investing in."
"What do we need to be investing in, not just through little pockets, but what do we roll out wholescale?"
In January 2016, then Education Secretary Nicky Morgan announced funding of £20m to establish a new "What Works Centre" for children's social care, with the aim of making sure social workers across the country are able to learn from the very best examples of frontline social work.
It was announced that the centre would be launched later in 2016, but it is yet to get up and running.
"The DfE talks about the What Works Centre, but, at the moment it just feels that what has come out hasn't really been coherent," Michalska said.
A DfE spokeswoman said: "The innovation programme gives professionals the freedom to develop new and innovative ways of working, while providing valuable evidence of best practice that is helping to improve services all over the country.
"Findings from projects are key to the success of the programme, and evaluation reports are publicly available online to ensure lessons are learned. We will work with the new What Works Centre for children's social care to make the best use of this evidence when it launches later this year."
Michalska also told CYP Now that she wants the ADCS itself to play a part in sharing best practice by improving the way it passes on learning from peer review exercises.
"There is also a lot of work that ADCS has done through peer reviews and peer challenge that we haven't necessarily been that good at sharing outside of the regions," she said.
"We owe it to ourselves and children to be much clearer about what we have to do, what works, and what doesn't work."
In a wide-ranging interview, which can be read in full here, Michalska also discussed local authority capacity to take child refugees. She said the issue of council "capacity" to take on unaccompanied children is largely financial, as central government funding does not cover the full costs.
"We haven't been very publicly shouting about money because it isn't very humanitarian, but the money is an issue," she said.
"In Nottingham I haven't got a spare internal foster placement so if I were to place a child refugee it would have to be in an external foster placement.
"The Home Office money [to cover the cost of local authorities caring for child refugees] barely covers the cost of an internal placement, let alone an independent fostering agency placement, which is probably twice as much.
"We don't have any provision within our own provision, therefore funding is inadequate."