Directors can seize freedoms to shape national policy for local need

Debbie Jones, who became president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) on 1 April, admits she is taking up the role at a "particularly challenging" time, but argues that local authorities have an unprecedented chance to shape their future.

"We’re seeing massive reductions in resources," she explains. "But there is a shift towards local flexibility, reducing bureaucracy and giving autonomy to the frontline, so we need to use the professional freedoms to shape national policy to suit local circumstance."

Jones is director of children’s services at the London Borough of Lambeth, having previously held the post in Luton, Durham and Stoke-on-Trent. She believes that ADCS members, alongside local partners, can come up with the "imaginative solutions" required to tailor policy to children and young people’s needs.

"As directors looking across the system, we can see the inter­dependencies and unintended consequences on issues such as the welfare changes, schools and health reforms and changes to adoption and care," she says. "It’s the vulnerable children that could slip through the net, so those are the children we have to focus on."

SCHOOLS

On policy priorities for the year ahead, ongoing reforms to the education system are high on the agenda. "With growing numbers of academies, there has been huge debate over the past year about the role of the local authority," Jones explains. "For us as an association, the priority is actually about tackling underperformance in all school settings. Who does it and how is of less importance."

She claims that local authorities are "getting on with business", working with academies and free schools on a par with other schools. "What’s important is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," she says. "In Lambeth, we’ve just had a teaching school alliance accredited. So that will allow us to build on what works and share good practice."

But with an increasingly diverse range of schools, the system for financing them is a contentious issue. Government plans for a new national funding formula have been put on hold until 2015. But existing arrangements are being "streamlined", so councils will use fewer indicators to calculate schools’ cash. There are currently wide variations in funding for similar schools in different council areas.

Jones argues that this means any new system will inevitably have "winners and losers". "We advocate a fair and transparent system," she says. "But getting it right is going to be tough and may result in inequitable funding in some areas. It’s one thing to rebalance budgets where people are not used to the service, it’s quite another to take away money when schools have been working with it for many years".

HEALTH REFORM

The risks of the health reforms have been highlighted extensively over the past year, not least the concerns about fragmentation of services for children with complex needs and a lack of accountability for safeguarding.

Directors will have to guard against changes that may harm the most vulnerable, but Jones argues the reforms give councils an opportunity to improve the health of children who were previously out of reach.
"The establishment of health and wellbeing boards provides huge opportunities," she says. "We want to have a greater impact on areas such as health services for children with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN). We want to improve transitions for those groups, so we’re working closely with the Department of Health and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services."

She says local authorities are already getting involved in improving local health services. "Some really innovative work is emerging," she explains. "For example, areas are working creatively with GP practices to offer therapy to children with behavioural problems rather than handing out medication."

But there is still a question mark over responsibility for safeguarding in health. Jones says that the success of some of the Munro reforms will depend partly on how far the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance provides clarity on accountability for safeguarding in light of structural changes to the NHS. Government guidance on the issue is expected in July.

ADOPTION AND CARE

Changes to the family justice and care systems, including govern­ment plans to increase the use of adoption, are another policy priority for the ADCS this year. Jones argues that directors will be under pressure to balance political demands with outcomes for children.

"Adoption is the single most important decision you’re ever going to make about a child," she insists. "Those of us who have seen the results of failed adoptions know that good enough is rarely good enough." She warns that the 12-month target to place children identified for adoption with new parents will not be suitable for all children. "We’re in the business of finding families for children, not children for families," she says. "If it takes longer than 12 months to find a home for a child with complex needs, then you need to take the time to secure the best outcome."

ADCS has expressed concerns about the use of targets on adoption, warning that councils could be dissuaded from even considering adoption for a child. Jones is also concerned about the validity of adoption scorecards. But she says the inclusion of contextual information on the cards will mean they do not just focus on "diagnosing failure" using statistics. In terms of financing social care, she admits that increasing referrals and rising numbers of looked-after children will need to be addressed.

TROUBLED FAMILIES

Given the government drive to transform the lives of the 120,000 most "troubled families" by 2015, intensive work with families will be a major focus for directors of children’s services this year.

The government plans to pay councils up to £4,000 of the estimated £10,000 cost of turning around a family’s life. To receive £3,900, councils must make sure that children in a troubled family have an 85 per cent school attendance record and fewer than three exclusions from school. They must also reduce antisocial behaviour across the family by 60 per cent and cut youth offending by 33 per cent. An additional £100 will be paid for helping to find employment for a family member.

"As we move to payment-by-results, we’re working closely with government to make sure the scheme tackles the right things," Jones says. "There are some obvious indicators of success, which are being used, but we must work with families on the areas that are going to have the most impact."

Jones adds that councils should learn from the experience of family intervention projects, to avoid overlooking the hardest-to-reach families. "We must make sure we don’t create perverse incentives for local authorities to pursue certain outcomes," she says. "You have to be so careful when you incentivise schemes like this that you don’t exclude precisely the families you want to work with."

And despite government rhetoric, Jones believes directors must avoid stigmatising disadvantaged families. "We must not label families," she says. "In Lambeth, we’re not looking at troubled families, we’re seeing it as aspirant families."

A YEAR IN OFFICE

Matt Dunkley, ADCS president, April 2011-March 2012


"We’ve had some positive influence in terms of shaping government policy over the past year, albeit more on the children and families side of the Department for Education than the schools side.

"As an organisation, we lobbied hard for a revision to the statutory guidance on the director of children’s services role. That guidance strengthens the local authority duty to have a spine of accountability for safeguarding, but also recognises local flexibility. So councils are free to organise their structures as they see fit, but have to test that against an enhanced accountability framework for child protection.
We banged away on the issue of scrapping the Ofsted annual assessment of children’s services – because of it being a fairly pointless tabletop exercise – and the final arrangements for dropping that are being made at the moment.

"Work we did on the ministerial advisory group has also borne fruit – for example, the new arrangements on passing responsibility for excluded pupils from local authorities to schools, which is currently being piloted. We’ve plugged away on the importance of the role of the local authority in education and argued that it can’t just be left to chance.

"My personal involvement has been greatest around adoption policy. We were critical about the initial idea of an adoption scorecard for local authorities, but I think we’ve influenced government to come up with a more nuanced model that includes contextual information to back up the statistics. We have got some significant movement from government on the way that they intend to use the data. If they are good to their word, then local authorities will not be judged purely on the statistics, rather the figures will be used as a starting point for a conversation.

"One area I am disappointed we haven’t made more headway on is the understanding that adoption is not the only form of permanence and that residence orders, special guardianship and private fostering arrangements are also important. There isn’t a hierarchy with adoption at the top.

"There have been areas of work that haven’t moved as fast as we’d have liked this year. Aspects of the Munro reforms, such as the development of the College of Social Work and some of the system reforms have gone more slowly than we hoped. We are getting there with sector-led improvement, but it has been an arduous and tricky thing to develop. There are still issues around Ofsted’s inspection frameworks that we need to iron out.

"But if you marry up what we’re expecting from government in terms of a reduction in central prescription around social workers’ timescales and a new inspection framework that isn’t so focused on process, there is a positive move in the right direction.

"In the coming year, the focus for directors of children’s services is going to be on two key areas. First, the dramatically redefined relationship with schools as increasing numbers of academies come on stream, coupled with massively rising demand for school places. The other major challenge will be around devising a financially sustainable model of children’s social care, where early help services are well entrenched and reduce the demand for statutory services. Cracking that will be vital.

"But I think we’re in a better position than we were a year ago and I’m optimistic that some exciting things are emerging for directors – whether you call us directors of children, places or people – we’re a tough old bunch and we’re forward looking."