Care Review FC v Care Sector United - match report

Whilst the Care Review team have been scouting, connecting and communicating widely, going outwards to get information coming in, Care Review sceptics have been talking with each other creating alliances and coalitions, making pleas, demands, creating websites, all predicated on making a big challenge once the Care Review Care for Change is published.

The Care Review is three months old during which it has held lots of meetings, made erratic publications.

Lots of people have left those meetings expressing deep concerns. These were not concerns raised by people attending or externally but about the people involved with, and in, and leading the review, the way they see and talk about things.

The publications have left readers scratching their heads as to the content, and the intent.

We're halfway through the first half. So far, it's a No score draw. The sovereign trust well-financed Care Review has had all the possession, organised itself, playing as a team, and had no shots, so scored no goals. The sceptics, with all the quality players and talent have yet to turn up, haven't had a touch of the ball bar a few flickers by the individuals, but not even really strung 2 passes together. Not much of a game. Someone will need to go for goal soon.

The Case for Change is promised to be published early in the summer.

In what's left of this first half what will the Care Sector team do to unsettle the machine team of the Care Review? So far, the game is going as the Care Review planned, implementing its plays about the Care Sector, probing, without the Care Sector taking the game to the Care Review, yet to make a tackle, or get the ball anywhere near the box.

Let's take a look at that Care Sector team. It's a group hastily brought together, skilled, experienced, but unused to playing together, currently fulfilling its potential to be a disparate group. Perhaps exactly what the Government successfully anticipated when planning for this review?

We have a tightly organised method team against a 'care sector';  the children who are living in care; adults who have grown up in and moved on from care; those who speak for those no longer with us who experienced care but who failed to make it into or survive their early adulthood; those who have and do work in the sector; academics who have studied and analysed care; and the associated professionals who have worked alongside, if not actually in, the care sector.

In the Care Sector side there are voices expressing dissatisfaction, displeasure, discontent, disappointment, distress, disenchantment or disgust with the manner in which the Care Review team and the game plan it’s established, has operated thus far and appears likely to keep going.

The game was billed as 'once in a lifetime', that will in all probability have to wait for another lifetime. It's like a 3rd round FA Cup game. The going is likely to get harder for the minnows if they get through this round.

If the Care Sector team had a manager they'd be 'doing their pieces' on the touchline, strategizing, as the team individually express their opinions and righteous indignation. Meanwhile the Care Review team stick to the plan, and the review goes on. Let’s be clear this disparate team of 'small fry' are playing a sovereign backed team of 'sharks'.

Let's be clear the Care Sector is playing on the Care Review home turf and has never played a game in a stadium like this before. The referee is not independent. The Government made a big transfer in the captain of the Care Review, signed him on the basis of his form and background, not in children’s social care, nor as a care experienced individual, or even a children’s social care academic.

The Frontline team he left, having played for TeachFirst before, same team in different colours, wasn't as successful as it promised. Heavily financed the ambition was consistency and continuity for the children they worked for but up to 75 per cent and 63 per cent of the 'graduates' left their posts and 29 per cent of the first cohort left the profession altogether a ‘success rate’ of approximately 31 per cent.

So, it's not value for money, or children, that's uppermost in the sovereign trust's heads. It's about changing the game for the future. Value measured as the future consequences of implementing an ideological belief.

Accordingly the sovereign trust identifies someone who they know already shares their opinions and even helped to create something which is entirely dependent on their funding for its ‘success’. 

The sovereign trust has bottomless resources, immense administrative and research, to date an insurmountable majority in Parliament, a swaggering style that brushes of any and every criticism, even the biggest.

An indication of the new rules of the game are seen in the legalising of lower standards for unregulated homes for children 16+. Lower standards for settings identified in reports as places where children are exploited, abused and neglected.

And who is the team opposing this? Good people. Concerned people. Informed people. A stronger team on paper than the Care Review. But so far it hasn't stopped the Care Review power plays. So far it hasn't sorted out what it is playing for. Is it forcing extra time, a replay, getting through to the next round, where it will face the same team again, but stronger? It doesn't believe it can win the trophy.

The Care Sector team is a divided, well-meaning group of passionate individuals firing at heavy armour with pea shooters.

Underdogs who go into a game expecting heroic failure often find that is what happens. People forget them. People remember when underdogs win. Actually, history shows underdogs often win. 

They realise they have to do it themselves. That's true here. The Parliamentary Loyal Opposition are sitting on their hands, precious little mention of the Independent Care Review from opposition benches.  Rumour has it that Josh MacAllister is a friend, a Labour Party member. They appear, at best, to be waiting for the review to be completed and then challenge it. Then it would be too late. The Government will not establish, pay for, support and allow a review to take place and then not follow its recommendations – because it will be precisely the recommendations they dictated.

Looking at it dispassionately. So far, care experienced people, care professionals and academics have failed and seem destined to continue failing to find common ground upon which they can stand together. On which to agitate, rally around a comprehensive set of proposals, in fact, a parallel review. Social work/care has not seen itself as governing itself. Maybe it should? Maybe it could? What would happen if it would?

We are aware of several groups and have heard of others who are passionate about the urgent need for reform of the care system. In its latest public content and publications the ADCS agrees the care system of which they are guardians is broken and it doesn’t work for those living with and engaging with it. Parts of it are excellent, these can, could and should be built upon but much of it, it is now agreed, is simply unfit for purpose. Maybe the ADCS would come on as a half time substitute and change the game?

Dispassionately, currently instead of loud and consistent oppositional voices there is an effective void.

So what is the Care Sector game plan to win?

Let’s start with some of the things that any team should include. Front and centre the 'love’ twins. Then spread through the team a set of values inspiring skill, 'proportionality’, ‘fairness’, ‘a human right to have an assessment of need’ of and for all children coming into or into contact with the care system, a ‘guaranteed assurance that identified needs will be met’ in a timely manner and appropriate location at a ‘placement of choice, not care philosophy’, a guarantee that ‘care will not abandon any child at 18’. This is the commonwealth of social work/care. Each is an investment not a cost.

It's a club built on compassion, community, cooperation with the ability to meet needs with love and nurture.

Children in care are our children. We, all, are corporate parents. Like any good parent, we should invest in our children's future by meeting their needs so that they can live and enjoy independent, not isolated, lives.

If the Care Sector team fails to come together then it will be culpable by not opposing the sovereign trust administration. It will let the Care Review 'boss the game.'  It is man marking that is required not zonal marking of territory. It is teamwork from the training ground. Practiced set plays. Playing from the back through the team, spreading the ball wide, cultured passing from both wings, forwards who can put the ball in the net. A team playing not to draw, but to win.

Unless the Care Sector can find a way to work together as a team it will fail our children. It must collectively try to review and re-create a fair and equitable care system.

Jonathan Stanley is manager of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, and Ed Nixon is a member of of Every Child Leaving Care Matters