Social work set free to innovate
Eileen Fursland
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire are among the authorities chosen to take part in the Partners in Practice programme to transform children's social care. Eileen Fursland finds out about their plans.
Changes are on the way in children's social services in some of the highest-performing local authorities in England. Eight areas are taking part in the Department for Education's Partners in Practice programme designed to explore how children's social care could be done differently (see below).
Cambridgeshire County Council is one of the Partners in Practice authorities. "The programme is an opportunity to look at what we're doing, deconstruct it and put it back together in a different way," says interim director of children's services John Gregg. "I believe we will finish up with services that look and feel different from what already exists."
Lincolnshire County Council has also been invited to take part and director of children's services Debbie Barnes is excited about the possibilities. Having met some of the other DCSs involved in the scheme, she says: "I get the sense that there is a lot of synergy in what we all want to look at. We are all experiencing similar pressures, similar challenges and we can all see how we could do things differently."
One issue for councils across the country is the number of young people coming into the care system. One of Cambridgeshire's proposals is a new model for working with 16- and 17-year-olds who are having difficulties at home and school, and are engaging in risky or antisocial behaviour and often substance abuse. These are the kind of young people who end up in care under a Section 20 order.
For some, it should be possible to ensure their safety and welfare without necessarily taking them into the care system, says Gregg. Instead, the council would work with other agencies from the voluntary sector, housing and youth services to meet their needs without the young people having to become looked-after in order to qualify. "We would like to see people coming together as a multi-agency virtual team, using the benefit of the Partners in Practice funding from the DfE," he says.
This more flexible approach could mean new solutions such as involving extended families and friends of young people, as well as exploring other options for accommodating them in families or communal care situations that are not the usual hostels or regulated placements, says Gregg. "For young people, this can feel more inclusive and collaborative," he adds. This approach could be relevant to some unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people too, he suggests. In 2014/15, there were 78 such young people needing care in Cambridgeshire.
The authority has a well-established participation group for young people in care and some of the impetus has come from them, explains head of safeguarding Sarah-Jane Smedmor. "Some of the 16- and 17-year-olds who aren't able to stay at home very clearly say to us: ‘We don't want to be looked after, we don't want to be in foster care, we just want support,," she says.
Responding to needs
But would councils be prepared to offer services such as accommodation and independent living support if they were not forced to by virtue of young people being in care? Smedmor says she can understand why people might ask that question, but maintains these young people obviously meet the threshold for a level of need and Cambridgeshire would continue to respond to that need.
Child protection conferences and plans are also in Cambridgeshire's sights. The council is unusual in having a participation group for children living at home on a child protection plan. Feedback from this group has made it clear that many of these children and young people do not actually want to attend their child protection conferences, but do want to be told what is happening and to have things explained to them.
To that end, there would be more direct work with social workers and the role of the independent advocate would be strengthened, with advocates involved over a longer period. "Young people are clearly saying they want someone who is like a sounding board, who can go through with them what the social worker said," says Smedmor. "We would also develop a version of the child protection plan that is more child-friendly for them, and obviously in a language they speak."
Currently, however, Ofsted measures participation by how many children physically attend their child protection conference. "We would be clear that this is participation in a different way," says Smedmor, who points out this would require a relaxation of the statutory guidance in Working Together to Safeguard Children.
Working with families
Another proposal is around creating a "bridge" between early help resources and statutory resources for working with families. At present, in Cambridgeshire when families receive support from early help services and then there are concerns around a child's safety, child protection social workers come in to carry out an investigation and the family loses the support of their familiar key workers. Instead, Gregg would like to see the early help services continue: "Parents would experience more consistency - people you knew and had built relationships with could be maintained within the plans and support you are offered."
Gregg would like to see social workers given the freedom to come up with a more flexible response that avoids setting into motion a whole train of events that is then difficult to stop. "We work with some families where the safeguards pull people into the system and it's then quite difficult for them to get out of it," he says. "At the moment, there's an either/or situation - either they are okay or they're not and you are into legal proceedings."
The DfE proposes to give social workers in Partners in Practice councils permission to deviate from some regulations and is discussing with Ofsted how best to assess children's services taking "measured risks" to improve care. Smedmor gives an example: "At the moment, if a family needs a bit of breathing space while an initial assessment is going on, we ask, ‘Are there any other family members the children could stay with while we carry out our assessment?, Currently, we have to assess grandma within 24 hours under the Fostering Regulations. We're asking for that to be relaxed to seven days to carry out checks. Quite often the assessment finds children can go back to their parents - and we can do that in a safe way that cuts out a huge amount of bureaucracy."
Gregg says social workers frequently find themselves hampered by regulations. "Often, social workers can see a situation and they can see a solution, but they are stuck because they come up against the regulations," he says. "There would still be meetings and communication, but we're looking to do it in a more meaningful and purposeful way.
"At the moment, you can't do any of those things because if you do you're not following the guidelines and Ofsted would say: ‘Where's the evidence of your planning meeting?,"
Any changes involving deregulating social care must be done with extreme caution, Gregg stresses - the regulations are there for good reasons and it is important not to forget lessons learned from what has gone wrong in the past. But he believes that with the right checks and balances, it will be possible to ensure things are still done safely.
Like Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire is looking at ways in which deregulation could work, and how early help services and child protection social workers could work together more flexibly. The council is also seeking new ways of supporting families where young people are engaging in high-risk behaviours.
"Where parents want to work collaboratively with you, the child protection system disempowers them and treats them as if they are poor parents," says Debbie Barnes. In particular, she is concerned current assessment tools focus too much on parents, problems and wants to adapt more strength-based approaches, such as the Signs of Safety model. "We'd like to work in a dynamic way and more directly with young people themselves to help and engage them to change, and we see families as an asset," she says.
Barnes also points out that some young people currently end up with two key workers - a youth offending worker and a social worker. "It makes more sense just to have one person, the one who has the best chance of enacting change," she says. "The power of the relationship between a worker and a young person is absolutely crucial and the more consistent that is, the better."
Roz Cordy is a frontline service manager in Lincolnshire children's services. She says her staff welcome the prospect of being able to work outside the Working Together framework. "Frontline social workers absolutely welcome it because they've seen the benefits of Signs of Safety, but are having to hook it onto the sort of assessments they have to do at the moment," she says. "So it would free them from that duplication. What social workers say is, ‘this is what we came into social work for - we are freed up from being on the computer all day,."
Financial support and incentives
Some of the proposals are more radical than others. Just as families with children with disabilities have been given personalised budgets, Gregg would like to explore what might be possible if certain carefully selected families who are recipients of social care were given something similar. Giving them financial support or a financial incentive to, for example, take their child to an after-school club, Scouts or a dance class could bring about change, he suggests. With the cost of having a child in foster care estimated to be anything from £30,000 to £60,000 a year, supporting some families in this way could have significant cost benefits too.
Will Cambridgeshire's proposals reduce the numbers of children and young people coming into care? "That is what the DfE will be wanting to know," says Gregg. Cambridgeshire has 627 looked-after children and an average of 25 new ones each month. He expects a significant drop in the numbers of Section 20 16- and 17-year-olds, but not in the number of children in need of protection from immediate harm. He also expects fewer episodes of children coming in and out of care.
As interim DCS, Gregg has been in post for 10 months. He prefers to work in short-term posts and explains he will soon be moving on. When he received the call from the DfE about Partners in Practice, he felt it was an opportunity that was too good for Cambridgeshire to turn down.
"But Partners in Practice isn't an easy option, it's a challenging option," he stresses. "It needs understanding of the risks as well as the potential benefits."
OTHER PARTNERS IN PRACTICE AUTHORITIES
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire are two out of the eight councils or partnership of councils selected for the Partners in Practice programme. Each has an individual work plan. All are currently in discussion with the Department for Education to determine what their focus will be and the funding required, and are awaiting proposed changes to be agreed.
NORTH YORKSHIRE
North Yorkshire has a range of goals including reducing the number of children care. It is also looking at "retaining a highly-skilled workforce with no reliance on agency staff and delivering innovation at a time of financial challenges". The success of its existing screening, intervention and monitoring systems means overall it has fewer looked-after children than two years ago even though referrals have risen.
ISLINGTON
Islington's focus is on Motivational Social Work. This evidence-based approach means the council will rate success in a different way. This will involve evaluating the quality of help provided, and the effectiveness of supervision and leadership as well as "learning from what children and families tell us about the experience and what works to improve outcomes". "We are measuring what matters rather than what is easy to count," says the authority.
LEEDS
Leeds City Council plans to embed restorative practice - an approach designed to place service users and those close to them at the heart of planning and decision-making - across children's services. This will include introducing an entitlement to family group conferences, and intensive work on domestic violence prevention and pre-birth assessment.
TRI-BOROUGH
The London boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster have merged children's services functions and propose to build on their existing Focus on Practice programme. This will involve "further improving services, examining and changing systems conditions through research and feedback, and exploring the impact of deregulation by easing procedural demands in key areas". The authorities also plan to set up a Tri-borough Centre for Social Work to support wider improvements in the sector.
RICHMOND AND KINGSTON
Richmond and Kingston jointly set up Achieving for Children, a community interest company that delivers children's services across both boroughs. It was set up to give the two authorities a greater potential for innovation, improved economies of scale and better opportunities for staff development, leading to a better trained and more stable workforce, as well as reduced management costs. It is also working with other authorities to improve standards. Their scheme will build on this.
HAMPSHIRE
Hampshire says it will seek to remove "some of the regulatory and bureaucratic burdens on social workers". "We wish to create multi-disciplinary teams, delivering meaningful interventions that create lasting change," says the authority.
DURHAM (WITHDRAWN FROM SCHEME)
Durham was invited to become one of the Partners in Practice authorities, but in May it withdrew from the programme after an Ofsted inspection found its children's services "required improvement".
REGULATIONS REMOVED, BUT AT WHAT COST?
According to the Department for Education, there is far less genuine innovation in children's social care than in comparable services, "with most areas feeling unable to take measured risks in the interests of children for fear of falling foul of prescribed approaches".
The DfE has therefore committed nearly £200m to innovation and improvement over the lifetime of this parliament, which includes the Partners in Practice programme. A small number of the highest-performing councils have been invited to join Partners in Practice and will be allowed greater freedoms in how they design and deliver their services. Meanwhile, a new "What Works" centre will use evidence on outcomes to make policy recommendations.
Enhanced freedom includes being allowed to deviate from some statutory regulations. The Children and Social Work Bill, announced in the Queen's Speech in May, offers the government the power to exempt local authorities from statutory duties.
Ray Jones, professor of social work at Kingston University and St George's, University of London, and a former director of social services, says promoting innovation in social work practice is positive. "But I also have a concern the government has an explicit agenda that children's services should be moved outside local authorities and the freedoms being promised now to the Partners in Practice authorities are possibly going to be very helpful in creating the marketplace [Prime Minister] David Cameron talks about," he says. "As well as being about innovation and creativity in local councils, this may also be about opening up a marketplace and making it easier and less costly for other organisations to come into that marketplace, especially those seeking to make a profit."
This could lead to more fragmentation and less accountability, he says. "We have to be aware there is a bigger script and context," he adds. "I'd like to see more professional and public awareness and concern about what is happening and I'd like to see it being given more political attention rather than being driven through by the current government without any discussion or debate."
Nushra Mansuri is a professional officer with the British Association of Social Workers. "The government needs to work in partnership with the profession - that is the best way to deliver change and reform," she says. "The trouble is there only has to be one bad case and social work feels it's on trial again and it becomes a political football."
She would like the profession and others to be able to explore reform and see what is of value without politics getting in the way. She is keen to see more creative and innovative work going on, but hopes that - this time - innovative practice will be sustained. "Social workers in those authorities who get the opportunity to practise in a different way are probably going to think that's really worthwhile," she&says.
However, she also points out the disparity between the millions spent on such initiatives and shrinking budgets in children's services.
"It's like parallel universes - it's quite dispiriting for social workers in mainstream services to see resources disappearing while lots of money is being poured into innovative work," she says. "That's really going to grate with social workers who feel that, because of a lack of resources, they can't do things the way they should. You actually need both."