Leadership: Realising capacity in social care

I opened the newspaper the other week. "Austerity to last into the 2020s" was the headline - a report predicting the next round of spending cuts. The report was accompanied by commentary from experts and politicians, criticising the cuts, and calling for a return to previous spending patterns. Rather than focusing on how to tackle today's problems, they urged a return to yesterday's funding.

The term "austerity" is a misnomer. It suggests the past decade's spending cuts are temporary and assumes that, once the books have been balanced, we'll return to more "normal" levels of government spending. This looks less and less likely, yet this misconception has the potential to obscure any vision for meaningful reform.

Now more than ever, there is a need for leaders to think boldly and challenge the status quo and entrenched old ideas of how public services should be run, and find new, more effective and efficient ways to provide support to people who need it.

Mention "public service reform" and people expect shiny new systems. In fact, many of our reform ideas are decidedly familiar: build trusted relationships, unlock the capacity that exists in communities, and consider alternative governance models that place power back in the hands of people in communities.

Eileen Munro's 2011 child protection review concluded our system must be more "child-centred". Six years on, it is worrying how little has changed. Despite some heroic professionals, services remain too transactional. Children are too often passed from person to person, with boxes ticked and paperwork filed.

We all know what really makes a difference to children's lives: relationships. Catch22's experience running schools, children's social care and apprenticeship provision teaches us time and again that strong and meaningful relationships are the most important factor in transforming lives. And yet the emphasis is principally on measuring the risk, the systems and processes around the child, rather than the love, support and trust that supports them. Any new initiative needs to measure the right thing, and the right thing is the strength of relationships and networks of support around children and families.

Team around the worker

Catch22's Project Crewe, supported by the Department for Education's Children's Social Care innovation fund, sees us supporting families in Crewe by reimagining and simplifying the current model of social worker caseloads. Rather than building a team around an individual, we build a team around the worker. The vulnerable family builds one strong relationship with one person, and that person is supported by skilled practitioners. A trusting relationship with one skilled worker is proving far more effective than a parade of changing experts turning up every week. It's simple, it's human, and it works.

Unlocking capacity in communities is central to any new approach to delivering children's social care services. There is far more capacity out there than we currently access, but tradition and orthodoxy tend to get in the way of innovation and improvement. We are too often constrained by dated frameworks and even when change is in the air, like the proposed powers to innovate contained within the Children and Social Work Bill, conservative forces try to deny the imperative for change. This orthodoxy results in overly specified service contracts often designed in isolation from those best placed to inform what works.

We must look beyond these traditional orthodoxies and into what communities can offer. For instance, social workers are not the only people who can develop transformative relationships. I trained as a social worker. I know that if managed properly, a range of different types of practitioners, including volunteers, can be trained to provide this kind of support.

Risk is front and centre when it comes to children's services. Governance structures are - rightly - in place to drive the quality of the help provided, ensuring appropriate accountability for those looking after children. But we manage risks by adding in additional processes. We're concerned with doing things right rather than doing the right thing.

We can counter this by putting practitioners and communities, rather than policymakers, back in charge, by affording them the freedom to use their knowledge and experience to do the right thing for the child. The state needn't do everything itself. Its role has to change. It must become an enabler and a convenor. At present, decision making takes place too far from the impact of the decisions and consequently leads to breakdown in trust and ownership.

There is a new pattern we're seeing develop - with some success - across public services. The emergence of free schools, academies and NHS foundation trusts, alongside the nascent development of children's trusts in Doncaster, Slough and Birmingham, and even prison autonomy. These demonstrate how more flexible governance enables greater innovation in the design and delivery of education, health and social care services while still maintaining high standards and accountability.

TOP TIPS

• You cannot "salami slice" your way to success. Challenge what exists - start with a blank piece of paper and design a system to deal with today's challenges
• There is lots of exciting new thinking and evidence-based innovation out there. Learn from other models and other sectors
• Public services must be designed on the frontline. You must start and end with the end user. If you're making policies that affect people, spend time in the homes of those people
• Now is the time for change. We're dealing with children's futures. We have a responsibility to act
  
  

Chris Wright is chief executive of Catch22