The basic children's services model was founded in the 1940s welfare reforms. It has aged well, but previous columns have demonstrated how systems thinking is leading to new solutions. The 70-year-old approach now often leads to rationing scarce state resources to vulnerable people. Austerity bites and the cracks are beginning to show.
However, necessity being the mother of invention, local authorities and partners across the country are developing and testing new service designs in three key ways:
These three approaches will now be analysed in detail.
Understand and anticipate
The first challenge is to better understand and anticipate the needs of local residents - enabling much more responsive and cost-effective forms of support. Intelligence is being integrated to create a single view of the child, including a wide variety of partner data (including from education, social, care, health, benefits, housing, marketing and social media).
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