Can good services remain standing?
Ravi Chandiramani
Monday, June 21, 2010
Like the suffocating drone of vuvuzelas, cuts continue to dominate the atmosphere in the children's services arena and in public services more generally.
If last month's £6.24bn of immediate cuts provided the build-up, today's (22 June) emergency Budget and autumn's impending spending review form the two main events in the coalition's goal to bring down the public deficit.
Interspersed are plenty of other cuts announcements, minor moves in comparison yet hugely significant in their own right.
The "cultural offer" of five hours of creative and cultural activity every week for every young person and the Future Jobs Fund were for instance banished from the field of play last week.
While the government continues so relentlessly to set the tone of austerity, it is up to local areas to identify where to make savings. Councils for their part have to juggle their priorities alongside statutory obligations to children and young people.
Many senior professionals have expressed their concern that we cannot afford to sacrifice good preventative programmes. They are right. For example, schemes that provide parenting support or things for young people to do should be filed under "essential", not merely "nice-to-have" if they do in fact prevent families from falling into crisis and soaking up more funds further down the line. It is imperative that decision makers in town halls make their tough spending decisions on the basis of a clear understanding of local needs.
Local authorities can also work better together on procurement of non-frontline services. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles last week claimed some councils have a "supermarket-sized budget but a cornershop mentality", urging them to use their collective bargaining power to get better deals from suppliers of basic things such as toner and paper.
But joint working will come into its own in the delivery of core frontline services. The whole-area approach to services exemplified by the Total Place pilots, where collaboration runs across agencies, councils and outside partners, is the big game in town.
Initiated by Labour, the coalition is bound to retain the scheme but rebrand it in its desire to seize some sort of ownership. Ultimately, it is about improving services. It is a management and commissioning task of the highest order. When this era of cuts is eventually behind us, we must hope the most effective services are left standing and shouting out for children.