council to pick up the baton has been Cambridgeshire. At fi rst sight the diff erences between
Hackney and Cambridgeshire are stark. Where Hackney is small, urban and densely packed, Cambridgeshire is a sprawling, rural county council. Before the introduction of Reclaiming Social Work, Hackney’s children’s services were in dire straits, bedevilled by high staff sickness rates and dependent on agency staff . In contrast, Cambridgeshire’s services were performing well with no problems in staff retention or absenteeism. Nevertheless, by 2010 there were a few
cracks appearing in Cambridgeshire’s system and director of children’s social care Niki Clemo was keen to act before any serious problems emerged. ‘Our performance was adequate at the time, but certainly not good enough,’ she says. ‘We were in the fortunate position of having a fully staff ed team, but a very
signifi cant proportion were newly qualifi ed. About 68 per cent had less than two years’ experience. So, we were seeing a variability of practice. We’d see examples of very good and eff ective work, but on other occasions we’d see poor practice – things like delay in care planning for children awaiting adoption.’ Niki was also concerned at the suff ocating eff ects of bureaucracy.
Our performance was not good enough. About 68 per cent of staff
had less than two years’ experience so we were seeing a variability of practice
‘We were slaves to the computer and
it was driving our practice,’ she says. ‘We worked out that we were spending 80 per cent of our time behind a computer and only 20 per cent out with families.’ Looking for ways to improve, Niki sent
a group of managers to investigate the Hackney model. They came back ‘absolutely