LGA study is basis for fairer funding debate

The recent Newton and Local Government Association (LGA) research on children's services, though, does put some much-needed evidential meat on the anecdotal bones, and puts the lie to claims that high spending can be largely explained by poor local political or management decisions (Deprivation is key factor affecting spending on children's services, CYP Now, July 2018).

The notion that high-spending local authorities could make "efficiencies" to greatly reduce spending has been shown up as absurd. That isn't to say that political leadership and creative management can't have any impact on costs as well as service effectiveness - of course they can - but there are no magic bullets. If there were, we would have found them long ago, and they would be well documented and widely used. In my time as a director, I did my best to seek out best practice, and one of the main virtues of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) is that it provides a framework for sharing knowledge about what local authorities do and how they organise themselves. However, we all need to remember that "innovation" doesn't always work as hoped - it is important that we learn from failures as well as successes.