No quick fixes in turning around children's services

After a week of frenzied speculation on the back pages of the daily newspapers, Chelsea’s billionaire owner wielded the axe to his football club’s talismanic manager Jose Mourinho after a run of poor results that saw the reigning Premier League champions mired in a relegation battle. In the same week, Garry Monk, manager of Swansea City, also received his marching orders.  

The sackings were another example of how powerful owners removed from the front line believe the best way they can influence problems on the field is by changing those they entrust to do the management. And in the football world, all the evidence suggests that owners are becoming quicker to act when results are poor. Just six months before Mourinho got the sack, he’d led the team to its first title in four years, while Monk had guided his club to its highest ever finish. The adage that you are only as good as your last result rings ever truer in football management.

This same scenario is also being seen in children’s services. For some time the lifespan of directors of children’s services have been compared with Premier League managers, such is the fragility of their tenure. Now the government has issued notice to struggling children’s services departments that they will get six months to improve or face the prospect of a commissioner being parachuted in to oversee improvements.

The performance timescale may be in keeping with those in the Premier League, but they are unrealistic for children’s services. To expect substantial change in six months is setting up a failing organisation to fail again, with potentially damaging consequences for staff morale and recruitment. Changing a failing culture in a large organisation such as this is like the turning of a supertanker, as recent research from Impower showed. Consequently, those councils judged inadequate by Ofsted face an uphill task to avoid having responsibility for children’s social care passed to an independent trust.

The government is hoping that a change of management structure and leadership will provide the quick fix that it believes councils cannot deliver, in much the same way it has decided the only route to improved education standards is to turn all schools into academies. However, the evidence from academies is so far mixed – on average, maintained schools still perform better than academies. Meanwhile, the first children’s trust in Doncaster has just been rated inadequate by Ofsted a year after being established.

Despite this, there are plenty of examples of football clubs that change manager and almost immediately see an upturn in performance. However, for every managerial change that works there are many that do not. Unless the fundamental issues are identified and addressed, results – whether on the football pitch or in children’s services – are unlikely to change.

If ministers think that creating independent trusts run by charities, other councils or groups of experts is a silver bullet to improve children’s social care, they are mistaken. In some places it may be the best solution, but they will need time and resources – two things currently in short supply across our children’s services.

derren.hayes@markallengroup.com