Review of children’s social care system prioritises family help

The Care Review’s final report sets out over 278 pages the case for a “radical reset” of children’s social care in England. Review chair Josh MacAlister makes 80 recommendations with the aim of moving from a system “increasingly skewed to crisis intervention” towards one focused on family help (see box). This would see 17,000 children who would have come into care over the next decade remain with their families saving £517m in local authority care costs.

Research by the County Council’s Network, which is cited in the report, estimates that without significant reform 100,000 children in England could be in care by 2030.

“Every child who is supported to remain safely with their family provides an immeasurable lifelong benefit to those children, with the consequence that more resources are available to invest in helping more children and families,” the review states.

Redefining family help

A new definition of family help underpins MacAlister’s plans for supporting families, which are estimated to cost £2bn to implement over the next five years.

“Family Help should be built in partnership with the families and communities it serves,” the review states. “It should start from the mindset that all families may need help at times, whilst also being equipped to recognise when children might be at risk of significant harm.”

Family help should be delivered by “skilled professionals” across a multidisciplinary team with a focus on building trusting relationships when “mechanical referrals and assessments are replaced with tailored conversations”.

This approach aims to merge targeted early help work and work carried out under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which places a general duty on all local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, under what the review terms “family help”.

This is designed to “reclaim the original intention of the Children Act 1989 and provide children and families with the support they need, keeping more families together and helping children to thrive”, according to the review.

Carolyne Willow, director of children’s rights charity Article 39, describes the proposal as “depressing”, warning that it could “take away legal protections” that children currently have under section 17.

“This will be a review remembered for the structural reorganisation of children’s social care, moving people, services, power and funding away from local authorities,” she says.

However, Matt Buttery, chief executive of Triple P, which delivers an online positive parenting programme for individuals and through local authorities, welcomes the move to redefine family help.

“This is something that will have a significant impact on the young people the system supports by keeping more children safely with their families and reduce the need for future social care support,” he says.

Family help teams

MacAlister’s proposals centre on the creation of family help teams working in geographical areas with as many as 300,000 residents designated by local authorities.

As part of the proposed model, social workers would work alongside multidisciplinary teams made up of professionals such as family support workers, domestic abuse workers and mental health practitioners.

Each family would be assigned a key worker, although in a shift from current practice, this would not necessarily be a social worker. Instead, it would depend on a family’s individual needs, the review states.

Specially trained expert child protection practitioners would be called upon to oversee decisions when a child is at a serious risk of harm.

“Social workers should supervise all work with families, in more or less depth depending on the complexity and risk of the situation facing the family,” the review states.

Family help teams would be overseen by local authority children’s services but would work from community buildings such as schools and new family hubs.

“At its most basic, providing multidisciplinary, non-stigmatising support should bring positive change to families and free up social work capacity to identify the small number of cases where children continue to be at risk of harm,” according to the review.

Buttery says plans to use community buildings as bases for multi-disciplinary teams will “complement” family hubs which are being set up by the Department for Education in 75 local authority areas.

In response to the review, children’s minister Will Quince has announced funding for a further five hubs to take forward its recommendations.

Ray Jones, emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University, says work around embedding family help teams in “stigma-free” environments is a “sensible way forward”.

The review “has not shied away from the challenge, addressing knotty issues like multi-agency working”, adds chief executive of the National Children’s Bureau Anna Feutchwang.

“Keeping families together is the right thing to do, but also makes financial sense: early intervention can reduce demand for more expensive crisis services later on,” she adds.

‘Radical’ pilot

However, Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of charity Become, says that while the review’s focus on keeping families together “is the right one for many young people” she has concerns about proposals to develop family help practices.

The review urges the government to pilot the devolution of power to neighbourhoods through what MacAlister calls “radical” family help practices.

This would involve a director of children’s services delegating operational responsibility for individual geographic areas to a family help director “with their own budget, delegated decision making and the freedom to work with communities from the ground up to design and build services” with oversight from the local authority and Ofsted.

Such models may “move decision-making further away from children and the people who know them best and remove some of the important checks and balances in the system”, warns Sacks-Jones.

Funding and delivery

Plans for a “fundamental shift” towards family help will cost £2bn over the next five years, according to the review, the bulk of £2.6bn needed to implement all the recommendations.

“Funding should be distributed according to deprivation and available resources to enable the largest amount of resources to go to the areas who have the greatest need,” the review states.

Ray Jones describes the call for short-term funding as “the elephant in the room”, adding that “the ambitions of the review need more than a temporary injection of funding after the decimation of 12 years of cuts”.

Keith Glazier, children’s services spokesperson for the County Councils Network, echoes Jones’ sentiment. “Reform will only be possible with sustainable funding, with councils regularly overspending on their children’s services budgets each year to meet the statutory demands on the system,” he adds.

In addition, Sacks-Jones says it is “imperative” people with care experience are consulted on any recommendations taken forward

Despite concerns over the removal of some “checks and balances” used to keep children safe, the sector largely backs the review’s aim to keep families together where possible and is now looking to the government to put forward a coherent plan on the implementation and funding of MacAlister’s recommendations (see box).

Former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield sums up this view in her response to the report.

“I hope the Secretary of State for Education will embrace these proposals and set out quickly how the government plans to deliver this vital public sector reform.

“Failing to do so is no longer a financial or moral option,” she says.

• Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, Josh MacAlister, May 2022 from https://childrenssocialcare.independent-review.uk/
  
  

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

• Eligibility for family help should be set out in a sufficient level of detail nationally

• Creation of a National Children’s Social Care Framework to set out in one place the overall outcomes the system should be achieving for children and families

• Improve sharing of information between local authorities and partner systems by 2027

• Improve financial and legal support for kinship carers and special guardians

• Establish regional care co-operatives to plan, run and commission residential, fostering, and secure care (see analysis, p12)

• A windfall tax on the largest private children’s home providers and independent foster agencies

• Increase support and protections for care leavers and people with care experience

• Improve training and support for social workers including a five-year career framework
  
  

IMPLEMENTING THE PROPOSALS WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

In its initial response to the report, the government announced the creation of a National Implementation Board made up of “sector experts and people with experience of leading transformational change and the care system” to oversee reforms.

The development of a National Children’s Social Care Framework, which is among MacAlister’s recommendations (see above), will also be carried out.

In a statement to parliament, children’s minister Will Quince laid out his “three key priorities” for implementing reforms as: improving the child protection system; supporting families to care for their children; and ensuring that there are “the right placements for children in the right places”.

He added that he will “work with the sector and colleagues across both sides of this house to form a bold and ambitious response and implementation strategy to be published before the end of 2022”. However, when asked by Labour’s shadow children’s minister Helen Hayes to commit to a detailed timeframe Quince declined.

The Department for Education has pledged to deliver an update to MPs on the progress of implementing reform by 23 May 2023, a year on from the publication of the review.