Memorandum submitted by the Public and
Commercial Service Union
INTRODUCTION AND
SUMMARY
1. The Public and Commercial Service Union
(PCS) is the largest trade union within both the civil service
and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). PCS has over
320,000 members and within the DfES represents over 2,500 staff
from administrative assistant (AA) to Grade 6, support grade and
specialist staff, and members of the Senior Civil Service (SCS).
2. PCS welcomes the select committee's timely
enquiry, and is happy to supplement this written submission with
oral evidence.
3. PCS remains concerned about the DfES' decision
to cut 1,460 jobs across the Department, and particularly as we
believe this will impact on the support for children for which
the Department is ultimately responsible, as well as impacting
on PCS members working in DfES' Children, Young People and Families
Directorate (CYPFD).
4. Noting the questions asked by the committee
about the impact of DfES staffing reductions on delivering improvements
to the children's sector, PCS wishes to raise our concern that
a combination of job cuts within CYPFD and the wider DfES in the
context of a major change programme poses a significant risk to
improving services and support for children.
5. This submission covers the following issues:
— The inadequate rationale for job
cuts within CYPFD's head office and regional teams.
— The risk to services and support
for children posed by CYPFD undertaking large-scale internal restructuring
while attempting to deliver a "whole systems change"
across the sector.
— The need to retain CYPFD's operational
capacity to support the change programme across the sector.
THE INADEQUATE
RATIONALE FOR
JOB CUTS
IN CYPFD
6. It is PCS's view that the situation in CYPFD
exemplifies how the DfES' commitment to a pre-determined reduction
in the number of posts has driven restructuring across its Directorates.
The restructuring of CYPFD is an integral part of the DfES' Organisational
Review, which is predicated on achieving a 31% reduction in its
staffing levels by April 2008. PCS believes that the restructuring
of CYPFD is not the result of a clearly worked through programme
of reorganisation across the sector, but that the DfES' ways of
working and its relation to the wider children's sector are ultimately
informed by the impact of staffing reductions within the DfES.
7. PCS is therefore concerned that reform of
the children's sector does not stem from the welcome intention
of improving services and support for children but by DfES' imperative
to achieve staffing reductions. While recognising the importance
of the Children's Act 2004 and Every Child Matters and that any
reform of the children's sector will have some effect on the DfES'
internal organisation, PCS does not believe that reform of the
sector should be predicated on losing capacity within the DfES
as a result of the Organisational Review.
8. To put the DfES' evidence in context, in April
2004, CYPFD announced plans to reduce its staffing level by approximately
200 staff by April 2006 from its October 2003 baseline figure
of 1042 staff. Further staff reductions, proposed to take effect
by April 2008, will see an overall reduction of approximately
390 posts by 2008; these reductions are justified on the basis
of structural change to delivery systems with the DfES taking
on a more "strategic" role, setting overarching policy
while devolving responsibilities for delivery to other organisations.
However, this rationale ignores the fact that CYPFD has been responsible
for strategic policy development and its operational delivery
as opposed to the frontline delivery of support and services for
children; the DfES' role in the sector is therefore already highly
strategic while frontline responsibilities rest with its partners.
9. Therefore PCS does not accept that the Organisational
Review has created a new role for CYPFD; it remains responsible
for overarching policy for services and support for children.
The impact of job cuts across CYPFD on its capacity to deliver
its policy and operational function has been acknowledged by CYPFD
in a note to its staff, when it was admitted that "reducing
the size of the Directorate while transforming the service we
offer and achieving better outcomes for children and families
is a tall order; it will be difficult for all of us at times".
THE RISK
TO SERVICES
AND SUPPORT
FOR CHILDREN
10. PCS now believes, on the basis of feedback
from members, that a further cut of 10 posts, beyond those already
announced and implemented, are planned for CYPFD's regional teams
in the near future; such a cut could result in the closure of
smaller CYPFD regional teams such as those in Plymouth and Liverpool,
and will further undermine the DfES's capacity to support frontline
practioners at a time of major change. The DfES's Future Role
of Government Offices (FROGO) programme will have also have significant
impact on the children's sector as it proposes to integrate significantly
smaller, more "strategic" teams responsible for the
children's sector into Government Offices (GOs).
11. PCS' prognosis is that this will lead to
a further reduction in regional operational capacity, possibly
to the extent that the CYPFD GO/regional presence is reduced to
small numbers of "change agents" who will only engage
local authorities and other organisations at a "strategic"
level. Withdrawing from regional delivery does not appear to sit
with the Department's stated position of promoting change locally
within the sector.
12. PCS believes that cutting the directorate
while leading an ambitious change programme for the children's
sector is, to quote the DfES Permanent Secretary, "a management
challenge too far". The challenge of restructuring CYPFD
head office functions, the move of CYPFD regional teams into Government
Offices (GOs) on the basis of further reductions in capacity poses
a significant intrinsic threat to delivering the vision set out
in Every Child Matters.
13. PCS believes therefore that is a strong case
for a moratorium being placed on staffing reductions within CYPFD
simply to ensure that adequate resource is available to lead and
support change across the sector. Job cuts across the rest of
the DfES mean that there is little or no spare resource available
to address any of the risks that are generated by the change programme
that DfES has ultimate joint responsibility for delivering. Continuing
to make staffing reductions across CYPFD in the present circumstances
amount, in PCS's view, to the creation of additional and avoidable
risks to the success of a major initiative.
THE NEED
TO RETAIN
OPERATIONAL CAPACITY
14. Ensuring that the DfES maintains its strategic
capability is important, but the implementation of the Children's
Act and Every Child Matters requires an effective operational
capacity within the Department as well as an ability to set the
strategic direction for the sector. This capacity is necessary
even when frontline delivery is the responsibility of other organisations,
and will be at a premium as the sector is restructured.
15. In describing a national framework for local
change, the DfES memorandum stresses the importance of helping
local children's trusts to develop; ensuring that good practice
is shared; monitoring local performance; and intervening if local
arrangements are found to failing children to the reform of the
children's sector. In PCS' view this is an admission that the
success of the reform programme requires more than a strategic
capacity on the part of CYPFD and the wider DfES at least while
the reform of the sector is being delivered. It is also clear
that the functions outlined above require both regional and head
office capacity to deliver them, and that the threat to CYPFD's
existing regional capacity is therefore a threat to delivering
the national framework for local change.
16. Operational work is a necessary complement
to the strategic development of the sector: PCS reflects its members'
concern that its importance has been devalued by an approach to
reform that does not grasp the need to maintain an effective operational
capacity within the DfES. PCS are also concerned that the DfES
appears to believe that a cut in overall staff resource can be
compensated for by using a higher grade mix to deliver services
through relying on `change agents' to be the interface between
the DfES and its local partners.
17. PCS believes a wider operational role continues
to be necessary to support change, and feedback from PCS members
who deliver CYPFD's work confirms that local practioners value
their lead, support and advice; if this role is further diluted,
it generates the risk that CYPFD will not offer the support to
partners that is needed but will offer a more limited, merely
"strategic" support because it will not have the resource
to offer a wider, more comprehensive service directly to partners
and indirectly to children.
March 2005
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