Review is a ‘sticking plaster’, but I’m optimistic
Andrew Webb
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
I am a natural optimist: but as a social scientist I am committed to collecting and using evidence, so in the current climate how do I rationalise my optimism?
The government’s long-promised Care Review is finally under way and now that the clamour about its independence and leadership appears to have died down, I am optimistic about its potential to improve the quality and consistency of services for families that are struggling. Having re-read its terms of reference I worry however that even if it makes good recommendations, that the Secretary of State of the day accepts them, and they are then implemented, they will simply be a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.
If we have learned anything about supporting families over the years it is that everything is connected to everything, and all our care, education, health and community resources need to be co-ordinated: implementing change is hard. While I am optimistic that the Care Review will improve processes, I worry that it will fail to influence the whole system.
The report by the Public Law Working Group (PLWG) into the factors behind the recent rise in children being taken into care sets out a clear and welcome expectation for social workers to be confident in their early interventions.
One of the questions central to both the PLWG and Care Review is whether the state intervenes too little or too much in family life. This question was also posed in the Nuffield Foundation early childhood research review, which demonstrated that the likelihood of state intervention is more dependent on where you live, your racial or ethnic background, and your relative poverty than it is on social policy. Which is shameful. I hope the Care Review will listen to the Black Lives Matter movement and respond to some of the powerful work on identity with cared-for children: but the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities report fills me with dismay. Its denial of much of the systemic racism encountered by families gets the state off the hook as responsibility for “failure” becomes located with the individual and as a result vulnerable people are pathologised. And the new children’s commissioner for England has recently launched a commission on how policy can better support a holistic childhood.
As the Nuffield review highlights, government policy has contributed to the fragmentation and “hollowing out” of services, and we know that there is no new money for the government’s own Care Review, so I hold little hope that an independent report would compete effectively with the pressing need to stockpile nuclear weapons.
Ironically, in the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004 we have all the power and ideas we need to tackle the issues of inequality and vulnerability that the government professes it is concerned about; and we know who society is failing. If we want to stop the state compounding existing injustice, we need a paradigm shift not a raft of competing reviews. In the meantime, I will manage my cognitive dissonance.
- Andrew Webb is former president of the ADCS and chair of the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies