Children’s Services Omnibus: Wave 1 Research Report

This report presents the findings from the first wave of the new DfE Children’s Services Omnibus Survey. The survey explored senior local authority (LA) leaders’ perceptions on, and activities relating to, a range of policy areas. These comprised demand for, and commissioning of, children’s social services; information sharing; support for adopters and special guardians; sufficiency of childcare places; and services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The questionnaire comprised a mix of open response questions and fixed category response questions.
The online survey was sent to all 152 upper tier LAs in England. In total, 101 LAs took part, representing an overall survey response rate of 66%. However, as indicated throughout the report, not all 101 LAs answered all of the survey questions. Analysis of questions with lower responses sometimes resulted in differences between groups that were not statistically significant; here we are not confident that the difference would have occurred had all LAs answered the question.
The research was carried out between 26 September and 28 October 2016. The key findings are outlined below.
Children’s social care
Understanding demand for children’s social care services
• Most LAs had a function or team that was able to analyse demand for children’s social care (84%).
• A majority of LAs had a function or team that was able to identify unmet needs for individual children and families (71%).
• Three in five LAs had a function or team to compare the cost of different interventions (61%) and assess the impact of different interventions (61%).
• Local authorities tended to be confident that they were able to identify unmet needs for individual children and families. Overall, 86% were fairly or very confident, compared to the 11% that were not confident.
Commissioning of services
• One in five (21%) LAs operated statutory children’s social care services jointly with another authority and a further seven per cent had plans to do so in development.
• Three in four (73%) LAs did not operate any statutory children’s services jointly with another authority. However, 48% said that they planned to in the future.
• Almost three in five (57%) LAs commissioned a voluntary sector partner to deliver children’s services, while a further seven per cent were considering doing so.
• Almost a quarter (23%) of authorities commissioned not-for-profit companies or trusts to deliver children’s services and a further 14% were considering doing so in the future.
• Seven per cent of LAs commissioned mutuals to deliver aspects of children’s services and a further 11% were considering doing so in the future.
Information sharing
• A large majority of LAs had multi-agency processes for dealing with child welfare referrals, either in place (91%) or in development (seven per cent).
• Among LAs with multi-agency processes already in place, most involved physically co-located teams (94%) and virtually all (96%) felt that the processes had helped improve information sharing.
Social care workforce
• Most LAs were confident that supervisors, senior practitioners and practice managers had the knowledge and skills to support social workers (90%), and that they would be able to maintain the usual number of practice placements offered to social work students over the next 12 months (89%).
• Just over half of LAs (56%) were confident that they would have sufficient numbers of permanent well-qualified child and family social workers to meet their needs over the next year.
Risks to service delivery
• LAs were asked to select up to three main risks to the effective delivery of children’s social care services over the next 3 years from a list of six options; nine in ten (89%) authorities selected financial pressures as a risk.
• Staffing issues were also seen as a risk to delivery. Overall, 57% of authorities selected recruitment of high quality staff and 51% selected retainment of current staff as a risk over the next three years.
• LAs’ top priorities for improving children’s social care services over the next three years centred around improving the quality of social work practice (74%) and ensuring sufficient budget to maintain or improve children’s services (72%).
Adoption and children in care
• Almost three in four (72%) LAs felt their relationship with the local judiciary over care proceedings was good, although 11% felt their relationship was poor.
• Just over one-third (34%) of LAs said that it was fairly or very likely that there will be sufficient care placements for all children in their authority over the next year.
• A large majority of LAs provide financial support beyond the Adoption Support Fund, both to adopters (95%) and to special guardians (91%).
• While 93% of authorities provide support groups for adopters, 55% provide support groups for special guardians.
Early Years and childcare
Early Years and childcare workforce
• Almost three in five (57%) upper tier LAs in England monitored the sufficiency of the Early Years workforce in their area.
• Three in five (58%) LAs supported Early Years providers in recruiting staff.
• More than half (55%) of LAs in England had a childcare provider portal in place to help providers to check eligibility for entitlements. A further 19% had a portal in development and 11% plan to in the future.
Assessing the sufficiency of places
• All LAs surveyed assessed the sufficiency of childcare places within the authority. Most LAs updated their assessment on an annual basis (56%), although one in five (21%) did this on a more regular, termly basis. Fewer than one in ten LAs updated the assessment less often than once a year.
• Three in five (61%) LAs had already assessed the sufficiency of childcare places with regards to the extended 30 hour entitlement for three and four year olds, and a further 34% were in the process of doing so.
Special Educational Needs and Disability
• All responding LAs offered support for parents with a disabled child in finding childcare. This support included publishing information about childcare options (91%); Families Information Services (91%); brokering childcare places with providers (79%) and providing help with transport (23%).
• LAs’ key systems for monitoring progress in implementing the 2014 SEND reforms were multi-agency boards, internal staff meetings, stakeholder engagement and internal self-assessment.
• LAs monitored outcomes for children and young people with SEND at three main levels:
o At the level of the individual child / young person, such as through monitoring outcomes in line with their Education, Health and Care Plan, or through on-going casework and formal Annual Reviews;
o At provider (e.g. school) level, such as through school visits and data audits; and
o At the level of the LA, such as through Quality Assurance Groups and centralised outcomes systems.