Joint working makes education suffer

Speaking in response to the publication of the Laming report into child protection today, John Dunford said that children's services departments lack the expertise to drive improvement in schools.

The union surveyed members in 65 local authorities to find out how services for secondary schools have changed since the first Laming review in 2003.

Three quarters of respondents claimed that services are worse since education and social services merged.

More than half said that the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) does little to improve support for young people, 39 per cent believe the CAF system makes it harder to get pupils the help they need.

Dunford claimed that directors of children's services have the "the job from hell".
He said: "The government needs to be much clearer about the role they want local authorities and children's trusts to play, and more realistic about their ability to play it effectively."

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, claimed that the government should not have merged education and social services departments. "This decision did no favours to either service," she said.

She also criticised government plans to make children's trusts compulsory.

"The solutions to preventing future tragedies such as Baby P lie not in top-down bureaucracy but in the provision of proper resources, back-up and training for frontline services such as social work," she said.

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers also warned that public services are being hampered by procedural overload.

He said: "Government should immediately act to lift the burden of bureaucracy on our public services, much of it imposed as a result of incessant reform."