Policy Briefing December 2013 102 Alternative Approaches to the Commissioning and Provision of Children s Statutory Social Care Services Introduction Over the last twenty years, there has been a rapid development of private and voluntary providers of children s social care services This has been most dramatic in the development of residential child care, where the private sector is now by far the largest provider, and in foster care where the private and voluntary sector now have a very substantial market share alongside the provision of local authorities The resources provided under the last Government for the development of early intervention and child care services, including Sure Start children s centres, led to the rapid expansion of mostly voluntary sector provision in these areas commissioned by local authorities In addition there has been growth of agency workers and the independent social work sector which in different ways represent an expansion of private and voluntary sector activity into what previously was almost exclusively the preserve of local authority-employed social workers and social care staff What has not developed because of legislative, moral and political constraints is the use of voluntary, not-for-profit and for-profit organisations in the delivery of core statutory local authority children s social care functions The responsibility for care planning and case management of looked after children (LAC), of care leavers, the undertaking of section 17 and section 47 responsibilities for children in need and children in need of protection and the even more sensitive areas of decisions to initiate care proceedings, to agree that an adoption placement is in a child s best interests or agree when on a care order can return to their birth family all remain solely local authority functions There are now significant steps being taken by the Government which reflect their desire to diversify the provision of services away from local authorities and, most critically, as a means to tackle longstanding poor performance by a small number of local authorities where other approaches to improvement have not been successful These important developments are the focus for this briefing The Journey to 2013 The children s social care sector has become used to, and now works well with, the diverse range of provision described above Skills in service commissioning have been developed and reservations about profit in children s service overcome, not least as it has been evident from both successes and failures of service provision over the last twenty years that there is excellence and mediocrity in all sectors However there has always been great caution about extending the scope of what can be commissioned and provided outside the local authority to the key statutory children s functions These involve potentially life-changing decisions for children and families in the most sensitive areas of their lives It has always seemed appropriate that these are taken by publicly accountable bodies and officials under local political control
The last Government took a cautious step towards opening up this area of local authority function through the legislation that was part of the Children and Young People Act 2008 that provided the statutory underpinning for Social Work Practices The government launched the social work practice pilot scheme However this was limited and has not grown as its advocates had hoped There seemed little appetite amongst social workers for this organisational form There were difficulties in the management of the boundary between what the responsibilities of the practice were and what remained with the local authority including in respect of decisions on resources The last Government also experimented with a variety of approaches to improvement for local authorities who were judged inadequate for their children social care functions The regional Government Offices had a role in monitoring, there were improvement boards and a variety of improvement partners were commissioned to work with local authorities to improve their standards of service They also used their intervention powers in relation to local authority education functions to require a small number of local authorities eg Hackney, Bradford and Walsall to either purchase education services from a private company or in the case of Hackney to establish an independent Trust to take on these functions The approach to improvement had varied success with some local authorities such as Doncaster and Birmingham remaining in difficulties over a long period of time The current Government abolished the regional offices and, while supporting sector-led improvement for a time through the funding of the Children s Improvement Board, has been attracted by more radical approaches which reflect their ideology of services working best in diverse and open markets, and their frustration with the previous approaches not working They have also mandated Ofsted to take on an improvement role in children s social care New Approaches: Opening Statutory Children s Service Functions to Other Providers There are three principal approaches in this area: the secretary of state directing local authorities to commission adoption services from other providers eg voluntary and independent sector agencies certain of their adoption functions eg recruitment of adopters; additional flexibility to local authority children s services to allow the delegation of functions for looked after children and care leavers to the voluntary and independent providers; the direction of a local authority to place the running of its statutory children s services in a Trust which is independent of the local authority as a means to achieve service improvement where there is a long history of poor service performance without sustained improvement This briefing will focus principally on the third, which is being implemented in Doncaster and considered for Birmingham Before focusing on that area, it is worth briefly covering what has happened in respect of the adoption direction which the Secretary of State for Education (SoS) has threatened to make and the flexibility allowed to local authorities for meeting the needs of LAC and care leavers The threat to direct LA s to commission certain adoption functions from other providers if they did not improve performance did have a galvanising effect on the sector The sector said that such powers were not necessary whilst also recognising that performance was too inconsistent and that it made little sense that over 150 LAs all ran their own adoption agency recruiting, in many cases, small numbers of carers each year Performance has improved and LAs are developing much deeper collaborations in their adoption work We will have to see whether the Secretary of State uses powers of direction to local authorities given the change in local authority performance
The flexibility, recently announced, to enable LAs to delegate functions for LAC and care leavers to voluntary and independent providers, is a means to extend the ideas behind the social work practices In particular it will give LAs opportunities to commission for outcomes in a way which current structures which separate case management and service provision for LAC and care leavers makes much more difficult This change, while widening the market, could be seen as a way to bring innovative approaches to how the needs of LAC, especially adolescent LAC and care leavers, are met to the advantage of all The diversity of approaches this will make available to LAs could enhance innovation and improve outcomes Directing a Local Authority to Establish an Independent Trust to Run Its Statutory Children s Social Care Services The Secretaries of State for Education and Communities and Local Government have appointed a children s commissioner for Doncaster with responsibility for the establishment of a Trust to deliver specified children s services functions In the first instance, these will be the statutory children s social care functions of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council (DMBC) Doncaster is required by direction of the Secretary of State for Education to co-operate fully with the commissioner in establishing the Trust What has led to this decision to establish a Trust? In March 2013 the SoS for Education appointed Professor Julian Le Grand to undertake an investigation into the most appropriate structure and governance arrangements for delivering improvements to children s social care service in Doncaster Professor Le Grand was assisted by Alan Wood, Director of Children s Services Hackney, and Dame Moira Gibb, formerly Chief Executive of Camden and chair of the Social Work Taskforce Professor Le Grand was the originator of the idea for Social Work Practices The background to this request was a long history of difficulties in Doncaster s children s services going back to the Joint Area Review of 2005 The Annual Performance Assessment (APA) for 2008 judged children s social care inadequate In 2009 there was a direction from DfE to establish an improvement board An audit commission report in 2010 said Doncaster MBC was not properly run In 2012 an Ofsted Inspection of child protection judged the service inadequate in the four principal domains and also found that concerns from the previous inspections had not been fully addressed Much of Ofsted s verdict was echoed in Lord Carlile s report in November 2012 into the Edlington case The report of Professor Le Grand and colleagues concluded that in large part this history arose from a long-term historic failure of corporate and service management and that some kind of drastic action was needed to break the cycle Their report also saw little sign of improvement in the performance of the service between the November Ofsted report and their work in April 2013 This was in varying degrees contested by the Council The report recognised the strong desire for improvement but there was disagreement about the Councils capacity to improve without further intervention The Council had strengthened senior management and appointed an improvement partner amongst other steps to improve performance Professor Le Grand gave particular weight to the history of Doncaster children s services and said Fundamentally the problem seems to be one of culture: there is a culture of failure and disillusion that pervades the service and that serves to obstruct every effort at reform The report argued for a decisive break with the past which would provide for the re-organisation of the structure and governance of children s services They recommended the removal of children s services from the direct management of the Council and the placing of the service into an independent organisation After considering the option of external procurement of an external organization, the report recommended the option of an independent trust It recommended the trust have a contract for five years renewable for a further five years
This recommendation was accepted by the SoS for Education, and discussions have proceeded since then with Doncaster MBC on how this recommendation will be implemented A key issue for Doncaster MBC was whether the council retained its statutory role in children s services or whether these functions would be removed and exercised by the SoS for Education Doncaster MBC accepted the recommendation to establish the Trust and work with the children s commissioner in doing so The Council gained agreement that, under direction from the SoS, they would enter into arrangements with the Trust to exercise functions on behalf of Doncaster MBC and therefore retain their statutory responsibility for children s services Doncaster, working with the Commissioner, Alan Wood (DCS Hackney) and DfE officials, are now working up the detail of the Trust arrangements A memorandum of understanding has been drawn up between the SoS and Doncaster MBC The intention is to establish the Trust by 1 April 2014 and for the Trust to be operational by 1 September 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter Initially the Trust will focus on children s statutory social care functions, but it is the Council s intention that over time all its children s services will be provided through the Trust The DfE are to appoint an organisation to help establish the Trust and undertake much of the technical work involved in this The DfE are meeting the set-up costs of the Trust and some of the other additional costs involved Doncaster MBC will agree an initial three year budget for the Trust There is agreement for the participants to work together to understand current and future demand for children s social care in Doncaster This project will now move quickly towards implementation in Doncaster Conclusions The plans for a Trust arrangement in Doncaster are new for the provision of statutory children s social care services Similar arrangements have been used in the past for Education services eg Hackney Learning Trust A Trust type arrangement is being put in place for the Children s services of the London boroughs of Richmond and Kingston The aim of the new arrangement is to provide a decisive break with the past and to give the organization, through a five-year contract, the stability and time needed to build lasting improvement in performance and improved outcomes for the children and families who will use the Trust s services in Doncaster The financial arrangements between the Trust and the Council will be one of the areas of most interest to other Las, given the volatility in expenditure and high costs of children s social care services At this stage in it is not clear how financial risk will be balanced between the Trust and the Council There are also other areas of risk where responsibilities are not yet clear, for example what the scope of the Trust s responsibilities would be for casework decisions about children that lead to legal liabilities in the future The Government is keen to try this approach to break what they identify as a long cycle of failure It is notable that Professor Le Grand has been asked to report on Birmingham City Council s children s service with a similar remit to the report on Doncaster and instead of a progress checking visit from Ofsted What is evident is the Government s determination to experiment with new organisational and governance arrangements and to end local authorities monopoly on the provision of statutory children s social are functions
Note: The key documents for Doncaster MBC including the report of Professor Le Grand, the ministerial correspondence and the response from Doncaster including their appraisal of alternatives and the memorandum of understanding for the development of the Trust, are available on the DfE and Doncaster MBC website at the following web addresses: Doncaster MBC: http://wwwdoncastergovuk/db/chamber/defaultasp?nav=commlist DfE: http://wwweducationgovuk/childrenandyoungpeople/safeguardingchildren/a00223342/impro ving-childrens-care-doncaster Contact Us Kensington House, 50-52 Albany Road, Earlsdon, Coventry, CV5 6JU wwwtrixonlinecouk T: 024 7667 8053 Copyright: The content of this Policy Briefing can be accessed, printed and downloaded in an unaltered form, on a temporary basis, for personal study or reference purposes However any content printed or downloaded may not be sold, licensed, transferred, copied or reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or in or on any media to any person without the prior written consent of Tri-X-Childcare Ltd