Commission for Social Care
Inspection evidence to the Education Select Committee inquiry
in to 'Every Child Matters'.
November 10th 2004
1. Introduction
1.1 The Commission for Social Care
Inspection (CSCI) is the single social care regulator for England.
The Commission is a statutory body whose primary function is to
promote improvements in social care - across children's and adult's
services, in local councils, and in the private and voluntary
sectors of social care.
1.2 The Commission works with providers,
commissioners, those who use social care services and other stakeholders,
including Parliament itself, and other inspectorates such as Ofsted
and the Health Care Commission.
1.3. The Commission's children's services inspection
work includes local authority children's social services, foster
care and registered services, such as children's homes.
1.4 The Commission has a duty to promote
and safeguard the welfare and rights of children. The Commission
has chosen to take a rights based approach to its work and has
adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Commission
has three obligations to children:
- firstly, to safeguard and promote
the rights and welfare of children in all that we do;
- secondly to put real outcomes
for children at the centre of all of our work; and
- thirdly to work with other Inspectorates
to develop the integrated framework for children's services inspection
envisaged in "Every Child Matters", and the Children
Bill
1.5 The Commission's submission to
the Committee's inquiry is in part based on experiences of colleagues
across the organisation but also relies on work that the Commission,
in particular the Children's Rights Director, has done in consulting
with children from care and residential education settings on
proposals in the green paper 'Every Child Matters' (the full text
of which are contained in a report published by the Children's
Rights Director in October 2003)
2. General themes
2.1 The Commission welcomes The Education
Select Committee's timely inquiry into 'Every Child Matters'.
CSCI is working with partners across children's services including
the Department for Education and Skills, to implement the provisions
of the Children Bill 2004.
2.3 High quality social care services
are essential to the success of the future of children's services.
For example the Green Paper estimates that there are large numbers
of children who either use social care services or are in need:
25,700 on the child protection register
59,700 children looked after
300,000 children in need
The Commission will make these children
the main focus of its children's work. The Commission also hosts
the statutory post of the Children's Rights Director, whose focus
will be to consult with and represent this particular group of
children.
2.2 The Commission has focused its
evidence to the Select Committee on the following issues identified
in the inquiry terms of reference:
· Inspection
· The
place of health, social services and education respectively within
integrated services
· Working
with Parents
· The
role of the Children's Commissioner
3. Inspection
3.1.
The Commission is a key partner
with OFSTED in developing the integrated inspection and performance
assessment processes, and is working with DfES and the Department
of Health to establish the ongoing Change for Children programme
with each local council
3.2 The Change for Children Programme's
main features are:
· Focus
on successful outcomes
· Listening
to children and addressing their needs in a holistic way
· Clear
accountabilities for children's services both at senior management
and member level in local councils
· A
duty on all agencies to work in partnership to deliver better
outcomes for children
· Addressing
the needs of vulnerable groups within the development of all services.
3.3 The Commission is working with
colleagues in Ofsted to produce a single process for assessing,
on an annual basis, the contribution of social care and education
services to improve outcomes for children and young people.
3.4 The Commission's Chief Inspector,
David Behan, is chairing the Steering Group of the next Safeguarding
Children review. This is made up of representatives from all participating
inspectorates and the review will given particular regard to children's
views and experiences. The Group will report to Government and
this will be published in the summer of 2005.
3.5 A joint report of one of the predecessor
bodies to CSCI, the Social Services Inspectorate, with colleagues
from other inspectorates, such as Ofsted and the Commission for
Health Improvement, 'Safeguarding Children (2001)' found that
the ability of agencies and professionals to safeguard children
was being compromised by
· inconsistent
prioritisation and resource allocation across agencies
· different
interpretations and understanding of each agency's safeguarding
responsibilities
· an
absence of coherent strategic planning across agencies to safeguard
children
· incoherent
thresholds for intervention and access to services
· Only
a few Area Child Protection Committees were able and equipped
to exercise their responsibilities to promote and ensure safeguards
for children and young people
It also identified concerns about
specific services that were not well integrated into local safeguarding
arrangements. These included:
Independent schools
General Practitioners
Child and adolescent mental health
services
Adult mental health services
NHS direct and walk in centers
3.6 The Commission is working with
our partners to develop the integrated inspection framework and
to achieve a balanced focus on achieving better outcomes for all
children, whilst providing more effective intervention and support
for vulnerable children, and ensuring that all children are properly
safeguarded. It believes that much progress has been made towards
that objective.
3.7 The Commission believes that User
and Self Assessment in inspections, including children's services
is an appropriate way forward. It recognises that in seeking to
maximise this there needs to be a recognition that this will mean
a difference in the role of regulation. The inclusion of the views
of those who use services will mean that uncomfortable messages
will be presented at times.
4. The place of health, social services and
education respectively within integrated services
4.1 The Commission agrees with the
Green Paper's analysis of the fragmentation and boundaries in
existing provision, and the principle of planning services around
the needs of the child. The Commission believes that integration,
as a concept in delivering public services is desirable and necessary.
However integration should not mean new boundaries around old
behaviours. Delivering improved services depends on how policies
are implemented, and on transformational and cultural change rather
than just how they are structured.
4.2. The role of the Directors of
Childrens Services together with that of the Lead Member is crucial
in providing local leadership to the implementation of the changes.
It is essential that the range of skills which the new Directors
of Childrens Service possess, draw together the experiences of
both Directors of Education and Directors of Social Services.
It is essential that there is no loss of expertise and knowledge
of childrens social care. The Commission will be working closely
with local councils to ensure that social care services for children
are not seen as an add on to some reorganised education department,
and that health services, the police and the youth justice system
are kept as inclusive components of the development of children's
services. Children's Services Directorates are not simply education
departments by another name.
4.3 Flexibility of response is essential
to enabling services to respond to individual need, but implementation
needs to avoid fitting children into a new pattern of local services.
Common structures do not guarantee consistency of access to services
or of outcomes, for individual children. The latter, not the former,
must be the objective. Focus on structural changes must not detract
from the actual delivery of service outcomes to children. Experience
from two of the Commission's predecessor bodies, the Social Services
Inspectorate and the Joint Review Team based at the Audit Commission,
demonstrates that structural change does not necessarily deliver
better services, and that effective joint working is often more
effective than common structures.
4.4. The fact that these plans are
`live' at the time of introduction of the Children Act 2004 provisions
provides a unique opportunity to develop joined up services.
4.5 The Commission believes that there
are outstanding questions how foundation schools and specialist
schools participate in the development of a coherent strategy
for children and the duty placed on councils to promote and pay
attention to the education of looked after children. The
Commission is concerned at the most recent figures given for the
educational attainment of children 'looked after', In a parliamentary
answer given to Lord Laming on 19 October 2004, Lord Filkin reported
that nine per cent of looked-after children attain five A-C grade
GCSEs, compared with over 50 per cent for the rest of the population.
(Hansard 19 Oct 2004 : Column 649). The figures demonstrate the
need for local authorities to look at services across social care
and education to offer looked after children the educational opportunities
that all children should expect. The development of Children's
Centres and Extended Schools are welcome however it is important
to ensure both access and suitability for children receiving social
services support or living away from their original home.
4.6 One of the problems that can arise
in extended school settings which include both health and social
care services is school peers knowing or finding out exactly what
problems or services an individual child has. This issue needs
to be addressed in the planning and monitoring of extended schools.
4.7 In the report of the Children's
Rights Director, referred to above, children thought that they
should have someone they can trust to turn to. In schools they
thought this should ideally be someone not directly associated
with the school. Children made the point about there being a need
for a choice of who to talk.
4.8 There was a real concern for some
children that if the people you had to visit about personal information
were based in the school, other children could easily know that
the child needed to be seen for personal help, which they feared
could lead to bullying. One group of young people were concerned
that providing healthcare and help with problems all at school
"could stigmatise some groups of young people."
4.9 The Commission believes that schools
are not always the best places for the provision of social care
services and that some children will want to access these services
outside of the school environment, indeed given the complexity
of the problems of some of these children they may not always
attend school and as such alternative locations for social care
services will need to be considered.
4.10 Although a key objective of the
proposed change is to remove boundaries between services and establish
single accountability there will always be boundaries between
children's services. For example, the provision of youth justice,
healthcare provision for children, children in custodial settings,
in the armed services, or in accommodation for asylum seekers,
all have clear rights and welfare needs but live in settings outside
the accountability structures set out in the Green Paper. Respect
for the essential contribution of other professionals working
across boundaries and in partnership must remain a top priority
regardless of changes affecting other boundaries.
4.11 The Commission has also welcomed
the National Service Framework for children, published in September
of this year, and believes that Framework, the Green Paper and
the Children Bill alongside five year improvement plans in health,
education and the criminal justice service which should be seen
as part of the improvement agenda for children's services are
all parts of the jigsaw which will help improve children's services.
4.12 The Commission is keen to ensure
that there are no structural barriers to a smooth transition from
children's social care services to adult social services. However
there is a risk that structural change puts at risk the very outcomes
the structural change is intended to bring about. Those accountable
for services to children take their "eye off the ball"
and pay attention to developing the changed structures rather
than the outcomes for children. It is the experience of the Commission's
transferring bodies that children can be most at risk when services
are preoccupied by structural change. The Commission is working
with colleagues on a framework to provide a smoother transition
in the period between childhood and adulthood.
4.13 Respect for the essential contribution
of other professionals working across boundaries and in partnership
must remain a top priority regardless of structural changes affecting
other boundaries.
4.14 The measure of success will be if
outcomes for vulnerable groups demonstrably improve by this approach
to integration. The Commission would expect that local partnership
arrangements would seek to address this on an inter-agency basis,
with joint teams, funding and shared priorities.
5. Working with Parents
5.1 We support increased information
and support for parents, but would recommend that this includes
increased information and support for some parents, such as those
receiving social services, foster parents, adoptive parents, and
parents of children with disabilities. Parents should themselves
be consulted over the types of information and support they need
to assist in the task of parenting.
5.2 The Commission's work shows that
the children of parents who are themselves in receipt of social
services are more likely to be on children at risk register, for
example, a Social Services Inspectorate Report in March 2000 ('A
Jigsaw of Services') found that over 60% of children whose parents
had a learning disability, were in some way known to social services
as `at risk' (although not all on the at risk register). In the
same report it was noted that "child care teams did not necessarily
record that parents had a disability and adult services teams
did not record routinely that there were children in the family."
This suggests that it is important that the needs of parents are
not ignored in the establishment of children's services in local
authorities. The same principle about children's services and
adult social care services working together could be said in the
case of children of parents with mental health problems or drug
and alcohol addiction problems. There is growing evidence that
over 50% of children on the register have parents who have either
a mental health or a substance abuse problem or both.
5.3 The Children's Rights Director's
report on the consultation with children about the Green Paper
also identified the need to "help parents to help their children".
5.4 Changes in the delivery of services
as a result of the Children Bill 2004 will need to reflect the
needs of parents as well as the needs of children, and any artificial
barriers between children's services and adult social care runs
the risk of either children or their parents suffering as a result.
5.5 The development of improved support
to parents and different engagement with parents in achieving
better outcomes for children will also need to ensure that a continued
recognition that the needs of children and the needs of their
parents are not always the same and that services need to work
with parents whilst always focussing on the welfare of the child
as their paramount concern. There will continue to be difficult
decisions to be made and judgements about risk, responsibility
and intervention across a wide range of settings. The workforce
need to be trained and supported to ensure they are confident
competent professionals with the right knowledge and skills.
6. The role of the Children's Commissioner
6.1 CSCI has welcomed the creation
of the Children's commissioner for England, and believes that
this post is complimentary with the statutory post of the Children's
Rights Director based in CSCI. The Children Bill, clause 2(4)
states "The Children's Commissioner must for the purposes
of subsection (3) have particular regard to groups of children
who do not have other adequate means by which they can make their
views known" Given the focus of the Children's Rights Director
post in CSCI, to consult with children who use social care services
and those children in registered settings, such as boarding schools,
CSCI believes this establishes clear, distinct and complimentary
roles for the Commissioner and the Children's Rights Director.
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