'Review's recommemdations risk creating two-tier workforce in children's services'

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 26 May, 2022

It is good the final report from England's Independent Review into Children's Social Care clearly identifies the inadequacy of support for families within the current system. It is at the same time a limitation that it was unwilling to name that many of the problems families are struggling with are linked to austerity and increased poverty inflicted on them as a political choice by the party in power.

The proposal to legally entrench the offer of family group decision making at pre-proceedings stage is welcome, though it is worth noting that birth families may be less likely to engage with such processes when child protection concerns are less advanced.

The recognition of lifelong links for young people in care and young people who have been adopted, and the importance of kinship care are important, but the detailed application of these recommendations will need close scrutiny.

The review’s recommendations on child advocacy and parental representation appear very positive, but there also needs to be recognition of the ongoing role social workers have in supporting children and parents to participate in social work decisions about their lives.

The report’s recommendation of abolishing the independent reviewing officer (IRO) role is a great surprise. It appears ill-thought through and based around financial considerations rather than children’s best interests.

It is notable that this proposal was not presented for any public discussion during the consultation phases of the review. The recommendation is of concern in and of itself, given IRO’s are there to provide independent oversight of children’s care plans. However, the manner of its inclusion in the final report lacks transparency and disappointingly cherry-picks misleadingly from sparse evidence to support its recommendation.

I will not repeat here trenchant and articulate criticism that has been made elsewhere of the review’s glib promotion of community as an answer to difficulties, or the problematic nature of its proposals for Regional Care Co-operatives.

I instead focus my comments on the proposals for the redesign of family help and child protection, and the considerable structural reorganisation they entail. It is notable how the final report pays no attention to recent prior examples of large-scale organisational change in the public sector in England, and the salutary lessons these provide.

Two major public sector reorganisations undertaken by the Conservative party since its return to power in 2010 – the Lansbury reforms of the NHS and the privatisation of the probation service – were unmitigated disasters.

A third -  the academisation of schools - is an emergent one. Anyone who has practiced in local authority social work for more than a few years will have had experience of how badly handled, top-down, organisational change presents impediments for good practice. Such change will likely pale into insignificance next to the re-structuring required by the review’s family help proposals.

Is it possible that the upheaval will ultimately be worth it? Yes, if it heralds the realisation of the promise of Section 17, providing better, seamless support to families, earlier on, as the review’s chair Josh MacAlister claims it will.

However, MacAlister’s argument that it is the current structure of early help provision which is problematic – rather than its systematic and chronic underfunding over the last decade – is highly tendentious and speculative.

It is also possible his proposals for structural change will inadvertently net-widen, bringing more families into the orbit of child protection services overwhelming them further, while also leaving some families more reluctant to access earlier support.

I fear we may also see much of the new family help work contracted out from local authorities. If so, it will be important to follow the money as to which organisations and individuals this work goes, with what transparency, clarity and accountability, and with what impact.

The new expert child protection practitioner role proposed in the review is weakly defined. It is presented as a specialised role linked to a new Early Career Framework for child and family social workers.

The report proposes that the functions of this role should be to “undertake joint visits, chair child protection planning, and lead multi-agency professionals who will input into decisions about what should happen to a child”.

This is a vague and flimsy role descriptor for such a key role. It would also appear that the role is not to be restricted to social workers. If so, then none of the roles in the new children’s services in England will require a social work qualification, begging the question of what the future of social work in children’s services in England is.

The recent history of probation in England serves as a cautionary tale of where poorly designed, changemakers-know-best, reform may leave child and family social work. The profession needs to find a strong voice to help shape these aspects of the proposals, and quickly.

Undoubtedly child protection work requires skilled, knowledgeable, sensitive practitioners to do it well. But one can say the same about skilled family support work. It is interesting that a review which so trumpets the importance of family support does not place the same value on family help roles as the ‘expert’ child protection role.

Such a difference risks the development of a two-tier workforce in children’s services, which is redolent of MacAlister’s past at Frontline. Despite the label of expertise attached to the new child protection practitioner role, its attractiveness is also unclear.

Child protection practice can be taxing. It is most difficult, of course, for children and families. But it is also challenging for practitioners, with high risk of burnout, as the Munro Review recognised.

A role which is comprised solely of working with families when there are section 47 inquiries, and beyond, increases the chance of burnout markedly. The current review seems blithely oblivious to this possibility.

In one breath in the final report, the chair informs the reader that the “time is now gone for grandstanding”. In the next, we are repeatedly promised a “revolution” in family help and “once in a generation” change.

There are simpler and better alternatives to those presented in the review’s final report if we think outside the funding and political constraints that have conditioned the chair’s recommendations.

These alternatives include: better funding services within existing structures; fully reviving Sure Start; increasing poorer families’ incomes, access to social housing and therapeutic care; acting decisively to remove the market from foster and residential care placements, rather than tinkering with it; and, providing a mechanism for the social work profession to have a genuine, representative, voice within government.

Dr Robin Sen is a member of the Care Review Watch Alliance Steering Group and a lecturer in social work at the University of Edinburgh

A summary of the main recommendations from the review can be read here