Charity launches campaign to 'redesign' children's services

London-based charity Kids Company says it has launched the See the Child, Change the System campaign because children’s services departments are failing to provide early support to many at-risk children, only intervening once a situation has reached crisis point.

Writing in the new issue of CYP Now, Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh said the child protection system cannot cope with the “real” numbers of vulnerable children in need of help and that social workers are being forced to find ways to limit the demand on services.

She said: “There is an unspoken understanding between central government and local authorities that the real numbers of children who are being harmed should not be captured. It would bankrupt councils who would be duty-bound to address their needs.”

Drawing on findings from research it has collaborated on with the Centre for Social Justice, Kids Company says the only way to overcome the problem is for the child protection and children's mental health systems to be redesigned so that resources are shifted from dealing with crisis situations to preventative work with struggling families.

As part of the campaign it intends to establish an independent “taskforce” – whose members will be drawn from a range of backgrounds and disciplines – to come up with a new model of delivering services to vulnerable children and young people. Javed Khan, chief executive of Barnardo's has already agreed to be a member of the taskforce.

Its work will be broken up into key functions including gathering “brilliant ideas” from practitioners and service users on the best structure and delivery of services based on what is already known to be good practice. These will be trialled and costed before a final model is agreed upon that Kids Company hopes will be piloted by one or more local authorities.  

Batmanghelidjh adds: “I’ve come to the conclusion that repeated governments have avoided radical change because they don’t really want to do the hard work needed to ensure that all maltreated and mentally ill children have the support they deserve.