Care Review launches penultimate stage of project

Chair Josh MacAlister has announced the review has reached its “development” stage after a number of engagement events and local area “deep dives” which aimed to help the review team develop a “deeper understanding” of key issues within the sector.

“We’re starting to generate ideas ahead of formulating the review’s final recommendations next spring. 

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“In this phase we’ll be returning to the young people, families, professionals and groups that we have developed a dialogue and relationship with this year. While at the start of this review our questions were very open, by this stage our questions are becoming more granular as we try to identify solutions,” MacAlister said.

Describing the new phase as a “great leveller”, he added that “it doesn’t matter if you are a professor who has spent years considering this in the abstract or a family who are experiencing children’s social care right now – pointing out problems is the easy bit, coming up with solutions that will work is hard.”

The review has launched its Call for Ideas, which asks young people, families and professions to submit their solutions to issues facing the children’s social care system to the review over the next six weeks until 31 December.

From January next year, the review team will begin its delivery phase, which will “bring together” results from engagement processes and ideas from the team to form “a coherent set of recommendations”. 

“That means we’ll need to get our heads down and be a bit quieter in early 2022 as we write the final report,” MacAlister said.

However, critics have questioned whether the direction of the review has already been decided based on a number of key reports backed by MacAlister.

Ray Jones, emeritus professor of social work, Kingston University and St George’s, University of London, told CYP Now that “there has been a flurry of comments and proposals recently by those who might be seen as close to MacAlister and the Department for Education” including a report by Tact proposing a national care service and a suggestion from the Competition and Markets Authority for a national commissioning agency for children’s social care.

He also notes that children’s commissioner for England Rachel de Souza has commented that “legal” work should be separated from “relationship” work and further noted that youth workers “may be better at relationship work than social workers”. 

“It does seem that the review may be preparing the ground by getting its ducks of allies and agents in a row with their public statements. The danger is of a brave new world of a more fragmented and remote market trumping any commitment to locally provided public services within communities to help families and, when necessary, to care for children,” Jones said.

Care-experienced children’s rights campaigner Ian Dickinson accused the review of being “choreographed and stage-managed”, adding: “They never listen to genuine concerns unless they are managing the meeting and can filter results away from the light.”

A spokesperson for the review said: "We have heard from over 1,000 people with lived experience of children's social care and 1000 people from the workforce and will return to many over the final months of the review to test our recommendations. Hundreds of organisations and individuals have made submissions through our Call for Advice, Call for Evidence and feedback to the Case for Change.

“As we approach the stage in the review where we are developing recommendations, some have chosen to share their ideas publicly. This is our attempt to widen the net even further and allow anyone with an interest to share their ideas. We hope this will offer those who may not have a platform to contribute to the conversation. Everyone is welcome to share their views and we hope some will share publicly to encourage debate.”