SOCIAL WORK & CHILDREN’S SERVICES
some local authorities to protect child protection services by reducing funding for other preventative services. But any more of that “will potentially push very hard on the system and lead to more referrals, which will clog up the system,” Wood noted. “The real challenge is that you can’t compartmentalise part of the current budget and say ‘oh, yes, that’s for child protection’.”
That’s because the level of funding and support for schools, early intervention, youth work has a major knock-on effect on the amount of pressure on the child protection services – “both in theory and in practice”.
“This is because there is nowhere to go, things get worse and, therefore, references get put through the system.”
Some councils are trying to make their child protection services more efficient, by giving more decision making responsibilities directly to social workers in units and teams. In other areas, councils are looking at streamlining the management around decision making and taking out some of the support services by supporting social workers with more advanced equipment, and looking at ways to reduce the administrative burden through contemporaneous reporting.
“So there is some very creative thinking going on,” Wood said. “The next line of protection comes in controlling the number of people who come into the system, and one way that is likely to happen is by making it a higher bar for children to get through the system.
“We’re probably at the point where there’s not a lot more that can be done without altering thresholds. But doing that will lead to problems, because it will create more pressure on what we call the ‘universal’ services –
schools, nurseries etc.”
Wood stated that cross-departmental work in this area isn’t anything ‘majorly’ new, but of late there has been a move towards having a social work approach for families rather than social work for children and social work for adults.
Some are wondering whether having a director for both services means councils don’t get the most use out of their social care workforces, he told us. “Some people are asking how you can take more of a family approach.”
ADCS support
While local authorities have to make financially tough decisions that will ultimately affect children’s social care services, Wood stated that the ADCS offers support in three main ways.
“The first is we have a collection of what’s going on in the system in terms of referrals,” he said, “so we look at the pressures coming into the system, and we present that nationally and to the Department for Education.”
He added that this allows ADCS to “temperature take” and let people see what is happening in their authorities compared with others.
Secondly, the ADCS highlights innovative ways of working. “For example, we have authorities that buddy each other and share expertise, hold conferences and seminars to see how they’re doing things differently,” said Wood. “That’s part of what ADCS promotes through its conferences and regional policy committees.”
The third area is the work that ADCS does with the virtual staff college, its leadership development agency. This allows ADCS to
ensure that directors and decision makers at assistant director level are exposed to academic thinking and forecasts about the future spend of local authorities.
“Through those three things we’re trying to do our bit – trying to get the sector feeling confident and supported in dealing with the tough issues,” he said. “But, of course, local authorities are all different. They all have different levels of political control, are funded in different ways and even the organisation of children’s services departments is very, very different. It is not consistent.”
Wood also highlighted that a good proportion of directors of children’s services, 40 to 50%, are now also directors of adult services – so their portfolios are much bigger than they once were.
“Some would argue that dilutes the roles of both the director of adult social services and the director of children’s services; others would argue it means they can get a better strategic view across both arms of social care,” he said.
Wood, who is also the commissioner for children’s social care in Doncaster, added that there seems to be a trend towards having directors with larger portfolios – both for children and adult social care.
“But where there is a situation where there is a lot of focus on the quality of child protection services – and you have your Rotherhams and Rochdales – if you’ve got directors of children’s services with very wide portfolios, some people will ask the question: can they seriously have their fingers on the pulse across such a wide- ranging portfolio?”
FOR MORE INFORMATION W:
www.adcs.org.uk
public sector executive Oct/Nov 14 | 29
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