Interview: Josh MacAlister, Care Review chair

Josh MacAlister, the founder and former chief executive of charity Frontline, was appointed chair of the long-awaited Care Review in January in a decision that split the sector. His role at Frontline, which runs a fast-track training scheme for social workers and is, in part, funded by the government, led critics to question his independence as chair. Since his appointment, MacAlister has published two reports on the key issues the review needs to address – The Case for Change and a summary of sector responses on the first report – and says he is on track to publish his final recommendations in spring 2022. Here, he answers questions about the work of the review and some of the key issues affecting children’s social care.

Are you happy with the timescales set when the Care Review was launched?

When we embarked on setting up the review, I wanted to make sure we published something quite early on that shared what we thought the issues were within children’s social care [The Case for Change], in a way that people could give us feedback on quickly.

Now we’re at the stage where we can explore that feedback in more detail which is on track for where we wanted to be.

Has the appointment of new Education Secretary (Nadim Zahawi) and children’s minister (Will Quince) affected the timescale or scope of the review?

If there was going to be a change of ministers, which is always a possibility of work in government, better that it happens at this stage than towards the very end.

We’ve got six months for Nadim Zahawi and Will Quince to understand what we’re hearing from the review and be ready to receive my recommendations at the end. I think It’s going to work well.

Zahawi is in a unique position having previously been children’s minister [so] it’s a good opportunity for the review to produce recommendations that are going to be understood by the Secretary of State who is reading them.

I’ve met with Zahawi and Quince to encourage them to read The Case for Change, make sure that they’re engaged and understand the timescales we’re working to. They’re very on board with that.

How do you respond to critics that say there has not been enough consultation with care-experienced adults and young people?

I would say that we’ve run an ambitious and broad consultation and engagement programme and we’re going to continue to do that throughout the review process.

We have spoken to just over 2,000 people with either lived or personal and professional experience of children’s social care.

I’ve met with people who are enthusiastic about the review, I’ve met with people who are critical and concerned about the review and so I’m comfortable that we have put a lot of work into hearing from people with personal and professional experience of children’s social care.

What are the key themes and messages in the summary of sector responses to the Case for Change report? How will it shape your final recommendations?

I think we demonstrate the broad range of perspectives on some of the questions we asked in The Case for Change, for example questions around family support versus child protection, the role of Ofsted and the role of social workers, and the fact that some of the problems that we see don’t have obvious or easy answers.

I hope that we can have a dialogue with people with experience of the system and who work in the system, whereby we can get a better answer at the end of the process.

Is the review looking into why some groups of young people are disproportionately more likely to be taken into care, for example children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and of black, Asian and minority ethnic heritage?

Where we have identified significant disparities, for example racial disparities, within the system, we are not shying away from that in the review process.

We are doing a number of roundtables on racial diversity and racial disparities within children’s social care and we’re making sure that we’re doing more research or summarising existing research with a particular focus on racial disparity.

I’m also doing in-person visits and video calls to see groups of people we haven’t heard as much from including Gypsy Roma Traveller communities, groups of young people who have been in care who are homeless and care-experienced adults who are currently in prison.

In The Case for Change you suggested social workers should be shifting focus from investigation to prevention, comments that were seen as insulting by some practitioners. Do you regret how they were received and would you do anything differently?

What we say in The Case for Change is that the system is imbalanced, too often going first to investigate and doesn’t do enough to help families and we stand by the position for all the reasons that are set out in The Case for Change.

That message can be one that sits uncomfortably for people who are working hard in that current system but having spoken now to hundreds of social workers, it is a message that they themselves have given to the review. They see this dilemma every day in their practice where they want to roll up their sleeves and have the time and the resources to help families but the system too often pulls them first towards investigation or assessment and referral and that is something I think needs to change.

Critics have said you have already indicated the direction the Care Review will take with its recommendations through your Blueprint for Social Care. How do you respond to that?

It was a very separate piece of work. It was done with social workers at a different point in time with a very different set of questions. The questions for this review are much broader and they’re about, how do we better provide a system of support that means children get love, safety and stability in their families and if they can’t that care can provide those same foundations.

I think that what the blueprint shows is that I’ve been thinking about these questions for a number of years and I would hope that the person doing this review had been giving thought to these questions before taking on a role like this.

How do you respond to critics who used social media to question your appointment and raise concerns over your independence?

Social media is an important way for people to have a voice and to be heard and it can be a powerful way of sharing information and keeping up with news but it isn’t the whole world.

I think that we have lost the ability to disagree and hear different perspectives in a respectful way across our politics and in society. It is important to try to remember that there’s more of the world off Twitter than on it.

In a recent blog discussing the three dilemmas faced by the review, you said a “clean break” with the current structure of the children’s social care system “might allow for something new and better to emerge”. Does this indicate you will be calling for a National Care Service?

I think the best way to understand my thinking it to read that three dilemmas blog because there are arguments for national and regional approaches for some respects but there are also very good reasons why focusing on structure as part of the review could be a distraction and working through that dilemma will be an important piece of work for the review to do in the next phase.

There has been a lot of discussion around profiteering from social care placements, and you have described the market as “broken”. Do you believe there should be an outright ban on profiteering from children’s social care?

I’m still concerned about the level of profit that’s being made within the residential care system and the children’s social care system. A review of the sector [commissioned by MacAlister] by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will help to give more analysis to why some of those problems exist and what some of the solutions might be.

It will conclude before this review finishes so I’ll be able to take on board the findings from the CMA work before we come up with our final recommendations.

Which thought leaders or academics in the sector particularly inspired you to become involved with social work?

When I was in teaching I worked with one social worker in my second school who was really inspirational. When I got into the work with Frontline, I met some amazing thinkers and practitioners who really shaped my own thinking like Donald Forrester [director of the Cascade Centre for Children’s Social Care at Cardiff University] who has done a lot of research into what it is social workers do to make a difference, and Judge Nicholas Crichton who set up the Family Drug and Alcohol Court. One of the things Nick told me is that we need to have a children’s social care system that prioritises dignity for everybody in it, that includes children and parents.

JOSH MACALISTER CV

• March 2021-present – Chair of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

• 2017-March 2021 – Advisory board member, Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England

• January 2013-March 2021 – Founder and chief executive, Frontline

• September 2011-January 2013 – Teacher and head of department, Reddish Vale Academy Trust

• September 2009-September 2011 – Secondary school teacher, Failsworth School via Teach First