ADCS president vows action on poverty
Derren Hayes
Monday, April 29, 2019
Rachel Dickinson, 2019/20 ADCS president, says she will stress the plight of children living in poverty.
Rachel Dickinson, executive director of people at Barnsley Council, is likely to need to draw on the famed Yorkshire grit over her coming year as president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS).
Dickinson, brought up in Leeds, takes up the presidency at a time of great uncertainty over the future of children's services. Much of this year will probably be spent lobbying ministers for more funding for children's services in the run up to the Comprehensive Spending Review in late autumn. This looks likely to be set against a backdrop of Brexit uncertainty and proposals to reform local government finance that could see poorer areas lose millions of pounds of central government funding.
Fair Funding Review
Barnsley is likely to be one of those to lose out under the Fair Funding Review proposals. Ranked the 39th most deprived council out of 326 in England, the leader of Barnsley Council Sir Stephen Houghton has described the proposed reforms as "unfair".
If pushed ahead with, they are likely to be challenged by the ADCS, particularly as Dickinson describes herself as being "driven by social justice" from a young age.
"I was aware that my school classmates' experiences were different to mine and I didn't think that was right," she says about levels of poverty she witnessed as a child.
Dickinson says tackling the government over child poverty - particularly the proportion of children living in working households, the so-called working poor - is high on her agenda.
"The association's 2017 policy paper A Country That Works For All Children is as compelling today as it was then, if not more so," she says.
"Child poverty [in England] is projected to rise to five million by 2021, yet, for me, there's been no government response to that - we're the only government within the UK not to have a poverty reduction strategy."
She says the association will need to "make the lived experience of children visible" in its work on child poverty. This could mean talking about children who come to school inadequately clothed, who care for siblings or parents, or who go hungry during school holidays.
"It cannot be right that in 21st century England we have these levels of poverty," she adds. "This can lead to strained family relationships or domestic abuse, which increases the risk of poor-quality parenting, parental mental ill-health and emotional distress.
"The cumulative impact of these factors affect children's wellbeing and thus their outcomes and future life chances. All of which translate to rising demand for statutory interventions from children's social care."
Impact of austerity
On funding, Dickinson says she will be looking for a "sensible, long-term funding package" for children's services.
"Councils have lost 50 per cent of their funding since 2010," she says. "The impact [of austerity] in Barnsley has been significant - we're fighting rising demand with less resources to meet that."
Cuts to early help spending is "creating a crisis for the future", she warns, even though councils have largely maintained vital prevention services, such as children's centres, through targeting what funding there is at the most deprived communities.
"We've done that in Barnsley," explains Dickinson, before adding "but we're at a tipping point.
"We're more focused on children that most need help but if we have to take more money out of the system, early help will be impacted - whether through raising the eligibility bar, fewer services available or waiting until problems are worse before support is provided."
Regional co-operation
Dickinson, who joined Barnsley in June 2013 after four years as director of children's services in Leicester, has been an advocate of regional co-operation among children's services departments through her role as chair of the ADCS's Yorkshire and Humber group. She says the Department for Education's engagement over establishing regional improvement alliances "has been a real step forward".
It would seem that Dickinson is hoping this partnership approach can also be transferred to discussions over future funding. At her presidential inauguration, a warning to the DfE for "no more ‘funny money'" nor "diversions down the cul-de-sac of variations in cost and demand leading to the false conclusion that efficiency will fund the gap austerity has created", represented the opening salvo in what is likely to be difficult negotiations.
"There is quite simply not enough money in the system," she added. "£2bn might steady the ship in the coming year for one year. And, £3bn might help to kick-start re-investment in services."
Dickinson, it seems, will be a straight-talking president - another trait associated with Yorkshire.
THREE KEY ISSUES ON DICKINSON'S ‘TO DO' LIST
System leadership
"I will re-assert the systems leadership role of the DCS as champion for children and I intend to challenge central government, in the form of the DfE and beyond, to do the same at a national level. I shall be doing this through a relentless focus on children's lived experiences and their outcomes. The reality of children's lives today. No disrespect to [children's] minister [Nadhim] Zahawi, but I do think we should have a Secretary of State for Children."
Youth violence
"The proposal to place a new legal duty on specific organisations to have due regard to the prevention and tackling of serious violence isn't the solution. The proposal is not about placing a duty on individual frontline professionals, thank goodness, but that's where the pressure will be felt - social workers, teachers, youth workers, public health nurses, A&E staff, and police officers."
Councils' education role
"A decade of education reforms have left us with one of the most autonomous school systems in the world. But that autonomy has also led to the fragmentation of responsibilities for school performance. Any reasonable person would, and does, expect their local authority to have a clear, unambiguous role in relation to all the schools in its area. Yet local authorities are not adequately funded for these duties."