Signs of progress in Doncaster

“We’re a million miles from where we were 12 months ago,” says Paul Moffat, chief executive of the independent Doncaster Children’s Services Trust.

He is referring to the progress he believes has been made since the controversial trust – the first of its kind in England – began operating in October 2014. The trust was ordered by ministers in 2013 after a highly critical government-commissioned report recommended children’s services be taken out of the control of Doncaster Council.

The council argued vehemently against the plans, which saw all children’s social care provision transferred to the trust, but Moffat says this has not been an obstacle in collaborative working between them. “Even though they were opposed to the trust, it has not stopped them supporting the trust or holding us to account,” he says.

“The relationship is one of a commissioner and provider. They come up with ideas about what the council can do to support the trust, and the mayor and lead member are really passionate about providing good services for Doncaster’s children. There’s so many interdependencies that it would be mindless to not be working collaboratively.”

Cultural difference

However, it is the fact the trust is not bound by local authority bureaucracy and competing priorities that is key to improvements made over the year, asserts Moffat.

“We don’t have to get embroiled in discussions about other services that are important to councils,” he says. “The trust can focus on the needs of the most vulnerable children, and that’s a significant cultural difference from before.

“The ability to make relatively quick decisions and not have to go through a number of layers of bureaucratic processes means we can respond to a local need more quickly. So if I have an issue in the west of the borough, I can respond to that promptly.”

The organisation has 470 staff, and there are 213 full-time equivalent social workers, and improving the quality and quantity of the workforce has been a key aim for Moffat. As a result, some agency social workers have been recruited to permanent positions, with the use of temporary staff halving from 20 to 10 per cent. Vacancies are also down to 35 (16 per cent), while a teaching partnership with Sheffield University will see the creation of a Step Up to Social Work programme that will put future social workers through intensive training.

But of equal importance for Moffat has been a focus on improving the skills of existing staff. At the time of the transfer, Moffat said some staff may not be up to scratch and while he is “not yet satisfied”, he says there has been progress in improving standards of practice. This has been done by addressing deficiencies in practice through specialist training and recruiting staff to tackle areas of weakness, such as responding to domestic violence and preventing children running away from home.

In addition, Moffat says one of his key tasks has been to instil confidence back into the workforce so that they feel empowered to “come up with ideas about what does and doesn’t work”.

“When you’ve been working in an area that has been under intensive scrutiny for many years and has had repeated assessments and inspections that talk about systemic failure, staff often hold back and don’t want to put their head above the parapet,” he says.

“If you build confidence, you allow staff to try things out that will lead to a more positive outcome, and then they are more willing to come forward with ideas.”

Funding boost

The trust has also successfully bid for funding through the Department for Education’s social care Innovation Fund to set up projects to tackle child sexual exploitation and domestic violence, and develop support for foster carers and mothers who have had multiple children taken into care.

Despite the progress – Moffat rates it “10 out of 10 for effort, but there are many areas where I’d give us seven or eight” – he admits there is “a long way to go” before the service is “out of the woods”.

“It’s early days and we can’t say at this stage we have sorted things because we clearly haven’t.”

Although Moffat says there has been positive feedback from local judges about the improvement in the quality of casework, he says the aim over the next six months is to address variability in assessment, care planning and supervision.

The trust has just undergone an Ofsted inspection. The outcome will provide an important indicator as to whether it is on track to reach its contractual target of being “good” by 2017.

But Moffat adds: “We’d hope all our services are at least ‘requires improvement’ within six months.”

Can the trust model work anywhere?

Since the Doncaster trust was created, Slough is the only other council where responsibility for children’s social care has been transferred to an independent trust. This is despite warnings by the government that it would intervene more readily where problems exist and nearly a quarter of councils inspected by Ofsted in the past two years were judged as “inadequate”.

Even so, Doncaster chief executive Paul Moffat is confident the trust model can work for other areas. “There will be different models of service delivery, whether it is called a trust or different social care organisation,” he says. “What the department and all councils are doing now is looking for different models which provide high quality and value for money.”

Moffat adds that he has not been “unnecessarily distracted” about the model of delivery, instead focusing on “what works for Doncaster”.

He adds: “There are some local authorities that are providing very high-quality children’s services and some where it has not worked and a different model is required. It is up to others whether they want to try the trust model or be a purist and stay at a council.”