Gove gives joint working a rude jolt
Ravi Chandiramani
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Michael Gove's revelation to CYP Now that a Conservative government will remove obligations on local authorities to have children's trusts in place will come as a thunderbolt for children's services, particularly in their efforts to safeguard children and enable them to thrive.
The shadow children's secretary is convinced children's trusts amount to nothing more than bureaucracy and inefficiency. His pledge pierces at the heart of efforts to boost partnership working under Every Child Matters.
While Labour's reforms have been far from perfect, Gove's position is seriously flawed on several fronts. It may well be the case, as he maintains, that joint working arrangements have given rise to too many meetings. Of course meetings in themselves won't keep children safe. But a lack of meetings won't either. While Gove promises at least to keep local authority children's services departments in place, by removing duties to set up children's trusts, he is stripping away the tools of the trade that directors of children's services and others need to help them work together.
There's a curious contradiction with Tory policy too: they rightly favour the idea of bringing together public services to work together more effectively, as embodied by the Total Place "whole area" approach. But for children's services, children's trusts will be the vehicle by which this does or doesn't happen.
Central to Gove's position is a belief in separating schools from wider children's services to allow them to teach. Yet all the evidence shows the main barriers to educational attainment are non-educational. Disadvantaged children and families will benefit from parenting support, social work or other services. Because schools are universal, where the majority of children congregate, they are actually the most cost-effective way to deliver and signpost families to these services.
Gove's position is at odds too with other senior Tories. Shadow children's minister Tim Loughton, and the Local Government Association's chief children's spokeswoman Shireen Ritchie support children's trusts' existence — although they won't admit to a party split in public, certainly not in an election campaign.
But Gove's thunderbolt does not signal the collapse of Every Child Matters. The mood of collaboration and co-operation in children and young people's services is well and truly entrenched in most areas. For many, partnerships work because people want to work together. Long may that continue.