Labour’s social care reforms must go beyond crisis response
By Samantha Jury-Dada, Managing Consultant
My first reaction to the news of children’s social care reform was: “Finally!” For many of us working in this field, the connection has long been painfully clear between the number of local authorities facing bankruptcy notices and an out-of-control provider market in fostering and private residential placements.
There is no doubt that morally and financially, preventing profiteering from our most vulnerable children should be a key priority for any government. Also welcome in Labour’s policy paper is a focus on the quality of placements. It’s vital to ensure, via the key discipline that is professional curiosity, that providers are actually providing top quality accommodation and don’t simply see the housing of vulnerable children as an easy source of profit.
These reforms are important, but they are a necessary response to crisis. Children should not be living in crisis. We must work to create systems that hold them safe from the start. Preventing care entry must be this government’s focus. The announcement on the government website starts promisingly - ‘The government will today embark on major reform to end years of neglect of the children’s social care support system – breaking the cycle of late intervention and helping keep families together wherever possible so every child has the opportunity to thrive.’ – but this will be an uphill battle if the main reforms only centre on children’s social care placements.
If the government is going to go further and take a radical approach to social care transformation, it needs to look through the lens of public service reform. What does this mean in practice? I’d be looking to prioritise initiatives where:
Local people who are accessing support are treated as experts in their experience. Where it is demonstrable that their insights and experiences are being drawn upon in the design, improvement and even delivery of early help and prevention services
VCSE partners are valued as a crucial and equitable partner to public services in community based prevention and targeted early help
Interventions are by their very design preventative in their approach, with shared values and mission across multi-agency teams
Public institutions have been creative with the use of budgets, understanding that investment in one part of the ‘system’ may result in benefits being realised elsewhere
There is an integrated support offer that addresses health, employment, education and social needs and demonstrate a holistic understanding of the real lives of children and families that require support
These priorities are as much about culture change at every level as they are about service delivery. This government has already announced £100m of funding for Public Service Reform. I hope that the Cabinet Office and the Department of Education use this moment to identify interdependencies and apply the learning to the next wave of social care reforms aimed at early intervention and prevention.
We have been working with clients to step back and define what Public Service Reform means in their local context and understand what it will take to apply this lens to service transformation in areas such as Children’s Services. If this sounds like something your local system could benefit from, please get in touch.