The pressures facing children's services departments vary. In some councils, increases in referrals to social care are putting acute strain on the system. In others, a lack of primary school places is the prime concern.
But across the board, the single biggest challenge for sector leaders is the need to sustain cost-effective children's services with ever decreasing resources.
With this in mind, the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People's Services (C4EO), the Department for Education and the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) are working together to help local authorities squeeze the greatest value out of every penny.
C4EO has come up with a model to measure the cost-effectiveness of interventions, establish the cost of universal services and identify how particular interventions impact upon outcomes.
Promising results
"We wanted to design a model that was as simple and practical as possible, so we've produced a web-based model, which can be applied to effective local practice," Christine Davies, director of C4EO, explains. "We're now in a position to offer councils tailored support to use the model from a small team of management accountants. We're also hoping to share examples of service redesign that are happening around the country and we have a repository of evidence and costed interventions. We hope this will go some way to supporting local areas."
The model has already been used in 60 local authorities, as part of a trial, and the results are promising.
Linda Clegg, director of safeguarding, early intervention and prevention services at Blackburn with Darwen Council, says the approach has helped transform local early years provision. "It has provided us with a strong case for supporting early years through children's centres," she says.
The local children's trust initially signed up to use the model because of concerns that early years provision needed to be better targeted. "A scattergun approach had taken place in many authorities with the development of Sure Start," Clegg explains. "The children's trust was concerned that locally commissioned services were not working as well as they should be and we needed a more strategic-led approach. We wanted to know the evidence, facts, what was working, what we were spending and how we knew it was the right thing."
The council started by assessing local needs, and mapping them to geographical areas. That assessment led to some fundamental changes.
"Our children's centres were rearranged in six clusters led by geographical managers," Clegg says. "Resources were allocated to each centre for local decision-making, so we devolved the money down; to let them make those local decisions and spend their resources where they know they need them."
Evidence of what works
Local commissioning and accountability proved key to cost-effectiveness. "The accountability is really important, every single penny had to be value for money and we had to evidence that," Clegg says.
"It gave us clearer links between priorities and effective delivery, so we could see the link between the two."
According to Clegg, professionals have been overwhelmingly positive about the changes, since the model has provided "a strong strategic approach to service development" and "evidence of what works and what doesn't".
Using the model has also made it far easier to decommission services that are not providing value for money, Clegg says. "It's assisting us with prioritising and decommissioning," she says. "If it doesn't work, don't carry on with it. Take stock early on and draw a line under it and move on from it, rather than keep champing at the bit."
Having helped it redesign early years provision, Blackburn with Darwen is now hoping to apply the approach to improve other service areas.
"I asked a practitioner what the benefits were of working with this model," Clegg says. "She said quite simply that it allowed us to see the wood for the trees. That is what this is all about, cutting to the chase and getting to the core."
THE DFE'S PRIORITIES FOR COST-EFFECTIVENESS
The Department for Education (DfE) and the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) are working together to improve cost-effectiveness in children's services, given the pressures of diminishing resources and increasing demand.
Their work is being split into five policy strands, reflecting the fact that the increase in demand for services focuses particularly on children's social care.
These policy strands are:
- Universal services This will explore the role of schools and health settings, early intervention work and the common assessment framework.
- Contact and referrals This will look at "front door" practice in children's social care.
- Interventions at the edge of care This will consider work with children on the brink of care.
- Looked-after children This will look at care proceedings, care placements and adoption.
- Common issues This will look at cross-cutting themes such as workforce, commissioning, performance management and improvement.
The contact and referrals policy strand will complement the Munro review and the looked-after children work will link into the family justice review.
The aim is to help central and local government decision makers focus on the most cost-effective practice and essential investment, through the use of data and evidence.
The DfE and ADCS are calling on professionals to contribute to this work. They want them to consider some key questions:
- How do we accelerate the take-up of good practice?
- What is likely to make the most difference in coping with financial and demand pressures?
- How can we get good information to the right people?
- How can we prioritise early intervention?
- What can we do nationally to support this effort and how do directors of children's services want to be involved?
