APPG for Children inquiry on children s social care: new models of delivery and governance

Chair: Baroness Howarth of Breckland, Tim Loughton MP Vice-Chairmen: Baroness Walmsley, Baroness Blood, Sarah Champion MP, Douglas Chapman MP Secretary: Baroness Massey of Darwen Treasurer: Earl of Listowel Clerk: Heather Ransom There was a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children On Monday 9 May 2016 5.00-6.30pm, Committee Room 2A, House of Lords APPG for Children inquiry on children s social care: new models of delivery and governance Speakers: Nicola Clemo and Elaine Simpson (Slough Children s Services Trust), Dave Hill (Essex County Council), Andrew Christie (Triborough Children s Services), Jim Taylor (Greater Manchester Combined Authority) Attendees: Tim Loughton MP, Baroness Howarth, Baroness Massey, Baroness Blood, Baroness Tyler, Lord McNally, Lord Judd, Baroness Uddin, Apologies: Earl of Listowel, Sarah Champion MP, Baroness Walmsley, Douglas Chapman MP Also in attendance: James Clark (Cafcass), Ross Fisher (Cafcass), Professor June Thoburn (University of East Anglia), Kathleen Nugent (National Youth Advisory Service), Georgia Iliopoulou (Association for Family Therapy), Julie Holmes (Ofsted), Rosie Bennett (London Borough of Merton), Kasia Platt (London Borough of Merton), Charlotte Taylor (Local Government Association), Dr Jason Pandya-Wood), Jackie Sanders (The Fostering Network), Meredith Davis (Action for Children), Sue North (NHS England), Anne Keatley- Clarke (Children s Heart Foundation), Wanda Wyrporska (Association of Teachers and Lecturers), Will Morton (Novares), Jessica Faulkner (Office of Sharon Hodgson), Jessica Brown (Children and Young People Now), Polly Walker (Mutual Ventures), Mary O Shaughnessy (Standing Committee for Youth Justice), Heather Ransom (NCB), Zoe Renton (NCB), Richard Newson (NCB), Keith Clements, (NCB), Annamarie Hassall (NCB), Anna Feuchtwang (NCB) Chair: Baroness Howarth welcomed all to the meeting. She noted that she had met the Children s Minister earlier to discuss the inquiry and the government s social care policy priorities. Today s meeting will look at new models of delivery across local authorities.. Baroness Howarth thanked the speakers for attending and for NCB for organising the meeting. She asked the speakers to present in turn. Dave Hill, Essex County Council: Dave is the Director of Children s Services for Essex and new President of Association of Directors of Children s Services. He wished to focus his

presentation on exploring the journey which Essex has been on since 2010 and its unique approach to children s social work. In 2009, Essex had been judged inadequate for a second time by Ofsted. It was clearly in some trouble: 70% of staff were interim or agency; and there were 2,000 pieces of nonallocated pieces of work. Essex was one of the first local authorities to be inspected under the Single Inspection Framework and was rated good two years ago. Prior to that Essex was considered adequate. There was no magic wand to be waved to improve the service. It was a case of starting to open the cases and work through them. A key factor was the relationship between quality and underpinning issues. He believes that there is probably a relationship between getting low numbers of children in the care system and low numbers of child protection plans in relative terms, with this being the case in the better performing local authorities. When he started in post, there were 1,615 children in the care system, which equates to 85 per 10,000 population. The range nationally varies from 182 per 10,000 in Blackpool to 28 per 100,000 in Richmond. Some variation can be attributed to demographics but not all. Essex s story is characterised by reducing the number of children in care, which stands at just under 1,000 children today. In terms of child protection plans, this has reduced from 1,450 in 2008 to 650 today. Not just exercise in numbers. Dave made an arrangement with council leaders when he arrived whereby it was agreed that for every 1 the local authority saved on children in care, 33p would be allocated to his children s services budget which was re-invested in early intervention and prevention in order to keep children out of the care system. 6 million was invested in a social impact bond to provide multi-systemic therapy and the Troubled Families programme (called Family Solutions in Essex) was implemented. If more children are received into care, the money doesn t add up. There is a correlation between low numbers in care and quality of provision. Essex has developed a clear philosophy of how to do social work through a model called relations based social work, which gave social workers permission to go and do direct work with children. 8 teams were set up comprising 80 social workers to do direct work across Essex. When Dave started, social workers were spending 70% of their time on administration and 30% on social work, and this programme aimed to reverse this. Social workers were kept as the number of statutory cases reduced. Caseloads were previously 25-40 families per social worker; this has been reduced to 12. There is a balance between investment in early intervention and firefighting. Essex s adoption work is fantastic and makes use of special guardianship and kinship care. Reducing numbers is not just about reducing the numbers, but also getting children in the care system into permanent secure placements as quickly as possible. Essex is adept at working with sibling groups, older children and those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Essex has also had a relentless focus on recruitment, training and development of social workers. All social work team managers have undertaken the Institute for Family Therapy s training programme in order to think systemically about effective practice. Top academics come in to talk to staff about cutting edge practice of the day. This has given social workers a sense of being valued and being held in high esteem. The current vacancy rate is 4% and Essex is considering a reserve recruitment list. Essex has a commitment to strength base and resilience in children and families, and they think carefully about bringing a child into care. They have also focused on ethnography,

making stories and films and mapping services around the issues that children and families are most in need of assistance with. Jim Taylor, Greater Manchester Combined Authority: Jim is Chief Executive for Salford. Each of the ten Chief Executives in Greater Manchester has a portfolio lead role on a defined element of devolution, with Jim leading on the children s portfolio. Greater Manchester encompasses 2 cities and 8 boroughs with 2.7 million population. Greater Manchester s model is a work in progress but at this point Jim is able to describe the way in which steps are being taken to scale up successful practice. The summer budget 2015 announced that the government and Greater Manchester local authorities would undertake a fundamental review of the way that all services for children are delivered. Jim s portfolio has deliberately been called Services for Children and not Children s Services because there are an inordinate amount of organisations that deliver support for children and young people. Greater Manchester is developing a proposal to actively promote better collaboration by the individual local authorities and their partners on certain key functions, supported by a relationship with government set out in the devolution deal. The review is looking at the best use of existing resources and linking service transformation to scaling up elements that local authorities have been working on for past few years. One is a new early years new delivery model which is consistent across the ten local authorities, also a new approach to education, new justice systems and some elements of children s services. The review is in partnership with HM Treasury, Department for Education, Department for Communities and Local Government with DfE s focus on driving an increase in innovation among local authorities. In Greater Manchester, two local authorities are rated good and 8 are adequate or requires improvement. The first element of the process was to look at data from across the ten local authorities and try to provide case for change. As the DCSs, Council Leaders and Chief Executives are each autonomous it has taken time to gain confidence using the data. A stock and flow model has been created which looks at outputs from the services across the ten local authorities and if there was a 5% reduction in referrals across the ten, if there was a maximum agency social worker rate of 10% and a reduction in the number of children in care by 20%, then the system would probably save 70 to 80 million over the next five years, and that s leading to somewhere in the region of 300 million of savings. Seven themes from the case for change were scoped: integrated health, youth offending, school s education work and skills, early help and complex dependency, children in care, complex safeguarding and quality assurance. Greater Manchester is aiming to apply a consistent definition of early help and early intervention, and to use elements of best practice across the ten local authorities and to decommission others. A minimum core offer will be defined and will be available in every local authority. The delivery model will be locality leadership and there would be a commitment to early intervention and prevention as a key strategic priority which varies across the ten local authorities currently. A commissioning framework will be used across the ten local authorities to create a best practice knowledge base for Greater Manchester. The integrated health strand will outline some minimum standards for targeted cohorts to manage demand and Greater Manchester is currently reviewing the acute and community paediatric and maternity service which includes CAMHS and children s disability provision. A hub and spoke model will be operated for youth offending, and youth offending will form part of an integrated early intervention youth support offer. The 6.5m budget for youth offending

will come into one central place, with some elements of local provision disestablished and other elements, including appropriate adults and sex offending interventions will be recommissioned. Each local authority has its own children in care strategy and placements through North West Placement. Greater Manchester are developing a children in care strategy and consistent edge of care strategy for children across Greater Manchester. There are three provisional adoption agencies and Greater Manchester want to raise adoption levels. In terms of complex safeguarding, project Phoenix takes a Greater Manchester response to child sexual exploitation, and the plan is to enhance this to include elements of radicalisation, FGM, modern slavery and other aspects of complex safeguarding through a hub and spoke model commissioning from a centre of excellence. Finally, Greater Manchester would like to create a GM quality assurance model which takes the best practice from the best independent reviewing officers and spreads this across the ten local authorities. Also liaising with Alan Wood around his review of Local Children s Safeguarding Boards and how elements of LSCBs could operate more broadly. This will be underpinned by enablers including a GM quality assurance framework and workforce development and commissioning framework. With each of the seven business cases, steps are being taken to move towards implementation plans. Nicola Clemo, Slough Children s Services Trust: Jim has outlined the macro and Nicola will cover the micro as Slough is three miles by ten. Nicola talked through some slides she had prepared (please see attached) which set out the governance arrangements for the Trust. The main difference between Slough and other models is that the Trust was enforced as a result of direction and therefore the context is very different. There are two key partnership arrangements between a strategic monitoring board, which is around the council and the Trust coming together to look at the outcomes that the Trust is delivering on, and then there is a partnership board which focuses, for instance, on the problem solving over resources. The new arrangements are yet to bed in as the Trust was only created seven and a half months ago, going live on 1 October 2015. The context is well documented and Ofsted last inspected at end of 2015. The enforced change have made a difference in terms of how staff approach the issues and how they are receiving organisations such as the Trust which has taken responsibility for practice. In any change process, it is fundamental to accept responsibility for where you are at. Particularly when a local authority is in intervention per direction, as in Slough s case, it is important to acknowledge that things were as bad as they were and the council did struggle to accept this, and therefore the challenge was harder. It was fortunate to have an Ofsted inspection seven weeks following the Trust going live as Ofsted evidenced the scale of the mountain to climb. Immediate action was took to safeguard children. The front door was secured and referrals were responded, statutory provision which was not being delivered was put in place, and poor staff performance was addressed. The focus for the Trust is completely on vulnerable children and families as we do not have to worry about other things that councils have to deal with and tackle. The Trust is in a position of celebrating and promoting social work in a way that is quite difficult for an inadequate local authority. From the outset, we have said that the system has failed. The Munro review recommendation are alive and well in Slough. The Trust is able to make decisions quickly with board member which include Liz Railton and David Wilkins. In

addition, we have attracted staff who want to be there with the focus on promoting and celebrating everyone s contribution to social work. Although less bureaucratic, the Trust is still struggling with the systems because these are provided through arrangements with the council and is therefore one of the biggest challenges. Social workers are given the tools to do the job and the environment in which to flourish, and we focus on being able to attract people to this. The Trust advertised for new recruits to a social work academy to work within a new model of delivery. There were 92 applications for a dozen roles. Many successful local authorities take a systemic approach. The Trust is looking at all staff having some contact and understanding of a systems approach. Attempts are made to keep families together through a strength and relationships based approach and the Trust is looking at the Triborough approach. The biggest issue is engaging with the diverse community and children in families in a community that has very little confidence in social work; social workers are seen as the people who come and take away your children. Andrew Christie, Triborough Children s Services: Andrew has been Triborough Executive Director of Children s Services for the last five years. This is a new model that has been in place for the past five years operating in Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster, which has begun to see results. There are some real themes emerging, which may be able to distil through discussions like the one at this meeting. The Triborough is a partnership between three local authorities, where each local authority remains sovereign as a council responsible for its children s services. Each local authority makes its own decisions about how their children s services might be delivered, resulting in different models and approaches in the differing authorities, although much is done on a shared basis. There is a shared youth offending service which is similar in basis to Greater Manchester. The work with courts is shared across the three local authorities, but some of the delivery of programmes for young people is still borough-based. There is a shared fostering and adoption service and range of shared specialisms. For instance, work with the courts about care proceedings. The three local authorities have helped develop early practice on addressing timescales in care proceedings and a specialist practitioner has been put in place across the three local authorities who worked to support social workers when they were involved in proceedings and took a lead role in liaison with the family courts. Social work services are still different in each of the local authorities. Kensington and Chelsea s is organised on a neighbourhood model, which was previously common practice. Normally there is an assessment service, a service for children who are subject to child protection plans, one service that works with children in care, and another that works with children needing care. The neighbourhood model can be beneficial as it promotes relationships through social work; relationships that need to be built up over a period of time. Triborough was put in place by politicians and Chief Executives, and its vision was driven by the financial austerity agenda five years ago. The arrangement was in part an exercise in scaling up to deliver savings from economies of scale. In the first three years, Triborough delivered about half of the savings that the local authorities needed to make from the bringing together of services. There isn t much greater savings to be made from the merger, but it has given us a platform for service improvement and development, which would have struggled to have been matched without this arrangement. During the recent Ofsted inspections, two of the three local authorities were judged outstanding and the third was

good with outstanding features. However, Triborough started from a high point where all three local authorities were previously judged good. The core principles that underpin achievement are remarkably similar to those described by the other speakers. One is stability and quality of leadership. Triborough s senior leadership are high calibre and the middle leadership across the three local authorities are very competent and able, with the core team being in place for some time. Reasonable caseloads are needed, ideally around 12 families per social worker. In local authorities where caseloads are much higher, it is much harder to achieve success. Finally, it is important to get good social workers and to reduce vacancies and the proportion of agency staff. These have all been achieved over period of time. Triborough have used Step Up programme and Frontline programme to recruit high quality newly qualified social workers, with the right kind of support arrangements in place for them. Triborough have a particular kind of quality assurance model called Practice week. Senior leaders spend a week in the workplace looking at cases with social workers, observing practice with social workers and this has helped enable senior leadership to have a good grip on standards of practice but also to learn from it. A second internal programme is Focus on Practice which is an approach to social work based on relationships, with investment from the Social Care Innovation Programme. Chair: Baroness Howarth thanked all the speakers and indicated that we would now be moving into the discussion. Tim Loughton MP: asked why so many local authorities are still getting into trouble despite so much reform and investment including Munro Review, better focus on quality of frontline social workers etc. Why is there such a big differentiation in performance? Dave Hill, Essex County Council: When verbal feedback was received from latest Ofsted inspection, all service leaders were brought together. In the 1990s, Essex was seen as a great place to work and then had to go through journey from a challenging situation to now, where Essex is rated as good with outstanding features. Dave asked the team who was here when Essex was struggling and and most people put their hand up. It is possible to fall from good to less than good very quickly and senior leadership is often an issue. Andrew and Dave were assistant directors in early 1990s and Dave was Assistant Director for ten years before becoming a Director of Children s Services. He was at Merton which was a poor performing local authority, but then received a judgement of good with outstanding features. Slough illustrates that the corporate environment very important and the Trust is the best solution for their current situation; without the Trust things would only get worse as the council did not acknowledge how bad it was. The right medicine for Essex was Dave and for Andrew at Triborough. Jim Taylor, Greater Manchester Combined Authority: The quality of leadership at DCS and AD level is vital as is the corporate culture and partnership working. Children s services should be at the heart of all services in local authorities including back office functions and through the democratic mandate. Partnership approach. Without one of these three elements wheels will come off. Tim Loughton MP: A number of times I visited failing local authorities and went round with cabinet members who thought all was fine. It was clear that there was a disconnect between frontline and senior leadership. It is imperative to get through the denial stage and make doing something a priority.

Elaine Simpson, Slough Children s Services Trust: It is important to remember that the Chief Executive is supposed to performance manage the Director of Children s Services. This sometimes does not happen as well as we would like. The service can be only as good as its DCS. Nicola Clemo, Slough Children s Services Trust: The Munro review of child protection set out what needed to happen. By implementing the recommendations, we will see improvements, but momentum has been lost time. Chair: Is valuing social workers and developing their practice actually making a difference? Andrew Christie, Triborough Children s Services: Andrew agrees with other speakers about the significant of leadership and the kind of corporate context. There is an issue of capacity in the system and have seen quite a few local authorities struggle to appoint a new DCS or Head of Social Care. Collectively we need create more capacity through succession planning and promoting good middle leaders to more senior roles. Baroness Tyler, Chair of Cafcass: There is a lot of focus on getting the right graduates in, but not enough focus on what the sector is doing to develop top and senior leaders. Could the inquiry look at what could be done at a national level? Struck that there is a huge amount that could be done to stem demand. Is there any work at a national level around sharing good practice and retaining good social workers? Putting up pay is not an option, so could we look at non-financial remuneration? Dave Hill, Essex County Council: At Association of Directors of Children s Services, there is an active discussion with Department for Education and Local Government Association about this, although the pipeline is drying up in terms of people coming through. Previously ADCS had an aspiring DCS programme but people would not sign up, so it was renamed the senior managers programme and ADCS was inundated with applications. Andrew Christie, Triborough Children s Services: We need to also focus on the head of social care and other practice leaders. The chief social worker is keen to prioritise this. We have now begun to understand what good looks like. Within the programme on system leadership, there was good management content, but it did not include how to run a good social work service. In order to retain good social workers, it is about giving reasonable workloads, good management and letting them do relationship based social work so that they get more reward from social work and stay. It took two years to get core assessments down to within 45 days. Jim Taylor, Greater Manchester Combined Authority: The first thing is about reducing the number of looked after children appropriately. In two local authorities, Jim has seen a high quality DCS look at customary practice, and in six months reduced the number of looked after children with a relevant court time significantly by 10-20%. A relationship with nearby good university can support progression for students. Salford has one of lowest rates of social work turnover. Kathleen Nugent, National Youth Advisory Service: As someone who works with looked after children, Kathleen has seen a huge difference between the quality of Independent Reviewing Officers who work with looked after children and a big difference in the quality of child protection chairs. Georgia Iliopoulou, London Borough of Merton: Georgia works as a Systemic Family Therapist and asked about the implementation of systemic practice within social care. There is a small model called Merton Social Care with small CAMHS service.

Andrew Christie, Triborough: When Triborough was inspected by Ofsted a wise inspector said that we were not getting enough value from IROs. They are the first line of quality assurance in any aspect of children s services, and we want them to make life a bit difficult for rest of the service. Chair: how do you make sure that IROs have independence in the system? Jim Taylor, Greater Manchester Combined Authority: Recognised variance of practice of IROs. In Greater Manchester local authorities and have taken a holistic approach to quality assurance. It is about training and having some element of consistency within the framework. If there are high caseloads and all factors mitigating against social workers doing a good job, then they are just used to this level of quality, whereas across the border a different set of expectations. Andrew Christie, Triborough: Basic tenet has been to raise standard to that of the best performing local authority. In each local authority, different things are at different levels and there are things to learn from each other. If a local authority is confident about itself, it can listen and say that the work is not good enough. Those not in difficulty will value IROs. The job of the regulator is to address denial. The spring consortium advising Triborough said that short courses were a waste of money as the impact on practice degrades quickly. We realised we needed to put alongside this coaching and advice for staff through systemic therapists and the social workers have welcomed this as it helps them feel valued. It is hard to recruit systemic therapists. About developing the pipeline. Dave Hill, Essex County Council: The funding is terrible going forward. Essex has saved 500 million but needs to save another 315 million in the next four years. Dave used to chair child protection conferences. In a good local authority with good team management and social workers, child protection chairs and IROs may become a luxury. In Finland which has one of best school systems there is no inspectorate. Do we always need checkers to check the checkers? Professor June Thoburn, University of East Anglia: Patron of NAIRO. The focus needs to be on retention and the importance of learning opportunities. There is a lot coming out about assessing social workers but not how learning will be built in. Post qualified learning is a way of retaining social workers. At UEA, we have had people come back 30 years later. The average duration of a job as a social worker is 8 years. Hope the inquiry thinks about post-qualifying learning as well as post-qualifying assessment. Lot about skills but updating of knowledge. Teaching partnerships, such as in Manchester, is an exciting development. Baroness Uddin: Baroness Uddin is a member of the House of Lords but also officer of the APPG on social work, which is taking evidence on mental health and social work. Previously worked in Newham when judged outstanding as social worker, child protection officer, disability officer and team manager. The inquiry has heard about successful work but also need to hear from local authorities that are struggling. Diversity of workforce has also been a challenge, as has getting women into senior management. Nicola Clemo, Slough Children s Services Trust: The attraction of working at the Trust was being able to focus solely on social care and not needing to worry about other things. The workforce is predominantly women, and in Slough there is a very diverse workforce. Andrew Christie, Triborough Children s Services: Andrew is about to be replaced by a woman. ADCS has recently published a survey of trends on DCSs. There are more female than male DCSs. The Triborough workforce is diverse but less so within senior leadership, and there is insufficient BME representation.

Anne Keatley-Clarke, Children s Heart Foundation: asked how the voices of children and young people will be incorporated into the inquiry. Elaine Simpson, Slough Children s Services Trust: Elaine is chair of Slough Children s Services Trust and is also chair of National Children s Bureau where we have worked hard to ensure that children and young people are fully represented at both board and other levels. In Slough we are so far away from best practice, we are working on developing an advisory board to feed into partnership board. Got to start from where you are. Recently commissioned National Youth Advisory Service to undertake direct work with young people. Anne Keatley-Clarke, Children s Health Foundation: Children s social services are often seen as the police officer rather than as a support service. Lord McNally, Chair of Youth Justice Board: It might be good idea to hear from Blackpool who are a poor performing local authority. YJB is in the midst of being reviewed. There is a lot of debate about how far one can take youth justice back into children s services and how to do it. Lord McNally sees the Children Act 1989 helping to underpin children s services rather than be a straitjacket. Is there scope for merging youth justice services with troubled families programme? There are 156 Youth Offending Teams in England so interested to see how Greater Manchester takes work in this area forward. Is Ofsted the right body as an inspectorate? YJB will be criticised for failure of monitoring Medway Secure Training Centre. If there is not a monitor and something goes wrong then the roof falls in. How much can the sector allow a thousand flowers to bloom and to what extent should there be limits? Chair: Baroness Howarth thanked all for attending the meeting.