Care Review: Early help central to plans for 'radical reform' of children's social care in England
Fiona Simpson
Monday, May 23, 2022
A £2.6bn five-year plan focused on early help for struggling families with a “fundamental shift” from crisis intervention forms the main thread of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care’s recommendations to government.
Care Review chair Josh MacAlister says in his 274-page report that “a radical reset” of services for the most vulnerable children and families “is now unavoidable”, highlighting data from the County Council’s Network which found that without reform more than 100,000 children could be in care by 2025.
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“What we have currently is a system increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise,” MacAlister says.
Family help
High on his list of key proposals is the creation of a new family help service set to replace “targeted early help” and “child in need” work.
Teams of multidisciplinary professionals including family support workers, domestic abuse workers and mental health practitioners, overseen by a council’s children’s services department, would deliver services from community buildings such as schools and the government’s new family hubs to those likely to receive a child protection order from their local authority councils.
MacAlister’s report also puts forward proposals for the government to pilot a “more radical local delivery model” for family help which would see a “devolution of power to neighbourhoods through piloting so-called Family Help Practices” which would give volunteer organisations and charities responsibility to access hard-to-reach groups.
Such practices would involve a director of children’s services “delegating operational responsibility for individual geographic areas to a family help director with their own budget, delegated decision making and the freedom to work with communities from the ground up to design and build services”, MacAlister says.
Of the £2.6bn funding forecast to implement all of his suggested reforms over the next five years, MacAlister, who was appointed to chair the review in February last year, says £2bn is needed to fund family help alone in a bid to reduce the numbers of children entering care.
“By 2030, this will have achieved a complete rebalancing of spending within the system so that over £1bn more every year is spent on family help,” the report states.
Services would be underpinned by a National Children’s Social Care Framework designed to tackle a “lack of national direction about the purpose of children’s social care and national government involvement”, it adds.
The family help recommendations also include the creation of an expert child protection role for experienced social workers to work alongside family help teams and take responsibility for making key decisions around child protection issues.
Commissioning reform
As part of the Care Review process, MacAlister backed an investigation of the children’s social care “market” by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which found that large private sector providers of fostering services and children’s homes are making higher profits in England and Wales than it “would expect in a well-functioning market”.
In his recommendations MacAlister calls for a plan for the creation of Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) which would take on “responsibility for the creation and running of all new public sector fostering, residential and secure care in a region, as well as commissioning all not-for-profit and private sector provided care for children as necessary”.
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Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the publication of the review, MacAlister suggested the creation of 20 RCCs across England to “address the current weaknesses in the system and establish organisations able to transform the care system for the future”.
The government should also levy a windfall tax on the 15 largest private residential children’s homes and independent fostering providers, the review states.
Alongside plans for RCCs and the windfall tax, MacAlister announced proposals to recruit 9,000 extra foster carers over three years and increase legal, practical and financial support for kinship carers to “match the scale” of that offered to foster carers and adoptive parents.
Social work training
The report puts forward a raft of measures around reforming training and qualifications for social workers including a new five-year Early Career Framework linked to national pay scales which is designed to improve training and development while providing more opportunity for progression, according to MacAlister.
It comes after recent Department for Education data showed more social workers left their roles in 2021 than at any time over the last five years.
Plans are also put forward to reform social worker registration to include a mandatory 100 hours spent with families for social workers on all levels.
Meanwhile, MacAlister also suggests putting limits on the use of agency staff by local authorities.
Support for care-experienced people
Among further measures put forward in the review are a raft of initiatives designed to support care-experienced people including a “strong recommendation” for care experience to become a protected characteristic by law following a push by campaigners.
MacAlister also suggests the creation of a life-long guardianship order for young people in care when they turn 18 which would recognise them “as part of a loving adult’s family for life” and questions the government’s decision not to ban unregulated supported accommodation for children aged 16 and above.
“These changes do not go far enough for children. All children in care should live in a home where they receive care,” the report states.
It also puts forward specialist recommendations for the care of teenagers, citing DfE statistics which show that from 2010 to 2021, the number of children in care aged 10 to 15 years increased by 26 per cent, and the number of children in care aged 16 and over increased by 37 per cent.
Meanwhile, independent reviewing officers and personal advisors should be replaced by a single opt-out advocacy system for young people, MacAlister adds.
Youth justice
“Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) or Secure Training Centres (STCs) are wholly unsuitable for children,” the review states, calling for all remaining establishments to be closed within the next decade and replaced with secure children’s homes.
“It is necessary to ensure there is sufficient capacity to end the use of inappropriate and damaging YOIs and STCs in their stead,” MacAlister adds, noting that in 2020, 28 per cent of capacity in secure children’s homes was not used.
RCCs would be responsible for the commissioning of such settings.
According to the review, the recommendations have been written to include the views of 2,000 people who have lived experience of children’s social care, and more than 2,800 who work in the system.
MacAlister said: “Children, their families and those who have been in care have told me that change is desperately needed. There are too many stories of lives lived isolated, unfulfilled or cut short. The time is gone for half measures, tweaking or quick fixes. A fundamental reset is now needed and the review has produced a plan to do just that.
“Change is now both morally urgent and financially unavoidable. We have a stark choice - keep pouring money into a faltering system or reform and invest to improve people’s lives and make the system sustainable for the future.
“How we care for our children is a reflection of our values as a country. When we get it right, children’s social care allows children and families to flourish - it can be a reflection of England at its best.”
