We must reassess what is expected of social care
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Last month saw the introduction of mandatory reporting for "known" cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) in under-18s. The new duty will compel all teachers, social workers and health professionals (health visitors, GPs and midwives, for example) to make a formal report to police if they observe, while doing their job, girls who have undergone an FGM procedure, or a young person discloses to them that they have been a victim of it.
Once a report has been made, the case will be referred to multi-agency safeguarding procedures for investigation. As a result, the new duty - necessary and laudable though it is - will almost certainly lead to a rise in the amount of FGM safeguarding work that comes through to children's social care services. With funding set to seep out of children's services over the next three years, many have been left asking where the resources will come from to meet the anticipated rise in demand linked to FGM mandatory reporting.
The situation is one example of the rising expectations on children's social care at a time when resources are about to be squeezed like never before. Social work is expected to take a leading role in tackling very modern social challenges such as preventing the radicalisation of children, online grooming and exploitation of girls by street gangs. And it is viewing this through the prism of legislation designed 26 years ago to largely protect children from abuse and neglect in family settings.
A generation on, the threats to children are now far more diverse and so the response needs to be far more sophisticated. Despite much effort over the past decade to develop a multi-agency safeguarding response, too many organisations still see children's social care as the "go to" service for any form of child welfare concern. Research by the NSPCC reveals the various responses to low-level neglect concerns from different universal services. While three-quarters of midwives surveyed said they would refer an early concern about a low-level neglect case to children's social care, 84 per cent of childcare workers said they would monitor it themselves. The disparity illustrates the confusion throughout the children's workforce over where responsibility lies in this era of multi-agency safeguarding.
The NSPCC says getting universal services to monitor and intervene more in low-level social problems, and preventing them becoming more severe, could be one way of stemming the tide of rising caseloads in children's social care. Some councils, such as Cambridgeshire, are looking at raising the threshold for taking children into care and provide more support to keep families together. The council admits it presents "unprecedented risks" but is being forced to look at the option to balance the books.
The government recognises it needs the system to do more with less. It is likely that the review of children's residential care, launched last week, will find ways to reduce the near £1bn annual bill for that. But there needs to be a fundamental reassessment of the role of social care in the wider safeguarding system, with this resulting in a new model of working that is realistic in its scope and clarifies where responsibilities start and end.