November 2004
LGA submission to the Education and Skills Committee
inquiry into 'Every Child Matters'
1.1 Introduction
1.2 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION WELCOMES
THE OPPORTUNITY TO COMMENT ON THE COMMITTEE'S INQUIRY INTO THE
REFORMS BEING PROPOSED FOR CHILDREN'S SERVICES UNDER THE BANNER
'EVERY CHILD MATTERS'.
1.3 AS THE NATIONAL VOICE FOR LOCAL COMMUNITIES,
THE LGA REPRESENTS NEARLY 500 LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND AND
WALES, SPENDING £65 BILLION A YEAR ON LOCAL SERVICES. OUR
MISSION IS TO SECURE THE CONDITIONS IN WHICH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
CAN THRIVE; PROMOTE LOCAL GOVERNMENT'S ACHIEVEMENTS; AND HELP
COUNCILS IMPROVE.
1.4 TO HELP US ACHIEVE THAT MISSION, THE LGA
WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN DEVELOPING A NEW VISION FOR CHILDREN, "SERVING
CHILDREN WELL" IN COLLABORATION WITH NUMBER OF PARTNERS INCLUDING
THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS OF SOCIAL SERVICES; NHS CONFEDERATION
AND CONFEDERATION OF EDUCATION AND CHILDREN'S SERVICES MANAGERS.
WE WERE PLEASED THAT THE KEY PRINCIPLES OF SERVING CHILDREN WELL
WERE ADOPTED IN THE GREEN PAPER AND HAVE BEEN FOLLOWED THROUGH
IN THE GOVERNMENT'S CHANGE FOR CHILDREN PROGRAMME. THESE WERE:
- A strategy for all children, not just those at
risk
- An outcomes approach at the heart of that strategy
- clear and transparent accountability across agencies
but rooted in local government
- A vision that is child centred and involves children,
families and communities
- All agencies sharing priorities and risk
- A robust workforce strategy to support the strategy
1.5 We have had good and active engagement with
the DfES both at officer and elected member level, through the
passage of the Children Bill in parliament and in the developing
Change for Children programme. The DfES has not taken on board
all of our concerns but we have had the opportunity to debate
issues fully.
1.6 We have had a particularly successful working
relationship with a grouping of the key agencies involved in commissioning
or delivering children's services, known as the Inter Agency Group,
the membership of which includes the LGA, ADSS, ConfED, ADECS,
SOLACE, the voluntary sector, NHS Confederation, NCB and the police)
which has been able to influence the direction of this agenda.
2.1 The place of health, social services and
education respectively within integrated services;
2.2 The
success in joining up these services will be key for driving integration
of all children's service providers at a local level and local
authorities have long and successful experience of brokering partnerships
locally. But other services provided by local authorities and
others also have an important part to play in the lives of children,
eg, housing, leisure and play, environmental protection and others,
eg, the living conditions of children has a huge contribution
to play in the well-being of children. How all these are services
are configured must be determined locally. We are pleased that
the Children Act allows for this flexibility.
2.3 Before the green paper was published in
September 03, under the Serving Children Well banner, we and our
partners were already piloting 35 different approaches to integrating
services focusing on better outcomes for children. The government's
children's trust approach is clearly based on the Serving Children
Well model, but local authorities and their partners must be given
the freedom to build on what is already working well and what
will develop the best outcomes for them, as they develop their
own integration of services with local partners. There is
a danger that we get caught up in structural issues and that we
take our eyes off the ball and what this change agenda is about,
ie, better outcomes for children, becomes secondary.
2.4 Integrated services work best when
individual professional identities are maintained - i.e. youth
offending teams. Indeed, integration will not necessarily benefit
all aspects of children's services, such as the potential for
vulnerable children to miss out due to the core business in combined
department being around education, and needs to be thought through
carefully. Central and local government need to focus on outcomes
and to build the structures around them. We need joined up thinking,
working and practice, not necessarily joined up site provision.
We have particular concerns regarding the Home Office and its
emphasis on anti-social behaviour and youth crime which seems
to be developing separately to the Every Child Matters agenda.
The youth green paper may go some way to addressing this but there
is currently a demonising of young people emanating from the Home
Office and we still have serious concerns about this.
2.5 Enclosed is a copy of
Vision to Reality, which the LGA produced with the Inter-Agency
Group and sets out the first steps to implementing integrated
children's services. It describes how there are 4 guiding principles:
- partnership
- leadership
- managing change
- learning and evaluation
It also contains examples of how authorities have
started to integrate their services according to the Serving
Children Well principles.
The practical implications of the 'duty to collaborate',
including the effect on funding streams and location of staff
and facilities;3.1
3.2 The LGA has lobbied
for local strategic planning mechanisms, which will be fundamental
to delivering the vision for children's services. This will be
central to developing a clear vision locally and will ensure that
all key agencies support the delivery of the locally agreed objectives
for improving outcomes for children. Therefore, we thoroughly
support that all key agencies have been given a duty to co-operate
with each other in the Children Act.
3.3 However,
the LGA, with support from the Inter Agency Group remain concerned
during the passage of the Children Bill, that it did not give
schools a duty to co-operate with other partners. GPs and registered
social landlords also have not been given this duty which is a
missed opportunity because it means, if they are so minded, there
is little that local authorities and primary care trusts can do
about it.
3.4 The
government's vision of breaking down organisational boundaries
and arranging services around the needs of children to ensure
they are safe, happy, healthy and achieving has the resounding
support of us all, however, we believe that the government has
risked undermining this vision by failing to require schools to
identify priorities and resources to ensure that they provide
for children facing additional challenges, working with other
agencies where necessary.
3.5 Although the government
claims that schools are central to the successful delivery of
improved outcomes, the Act does not require schools to change
the way they work. We believe that although some schools will
_ecognize the importance of working in a more co-operative way,
the government cannot rely entirely on the integrity of head teachers.
In order to fulfill this vital role, schools need clarity over
expectations. This is particularly the case in light of the DfES
Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners, which proposes
to free schools up from local authority control and give them
more freedom over their admissions policies.
3.6 The LGA also has
concerns about the lack of clarity between the duty to collaborate
and the duty to set up Local Safeguarding Boards. There is a lack
of co-terminosity/coterminous between the two and with different
relationships regarding accountability and governance. It's feasible
that the co-operation arrangements for example through the strategic
partnership, and the LSCB could act independently of each other.
3.7 In relation to
the implications the duty to collaborate will have on funding
streams and location of staff and facilities, these are issues
that will need to be worked through locally and should flow from
successful and effective partnership working that is already happening
at local level. We welcome the fact that the DfES are in the
process of streamlining and simplifying funding streams as part
of the central government contribution to integrated children's
services but it is vital that other key departments such as the
Home Office, ODPM and DoH are on board with joining up also so
this can be passed down to the local level. Priority setting
and target setting across government must be co-ordinated so as
to allow collaboration at the local level.
3.8 Integrating services
may mean that services are located where that is desirable and
achievable, but this may not be suitable everywhere. The location
of staff and facilities must be determined locally in collaboration
with the needs of local communities.
Staff and management needs: team-building, leadership
and training;4.1
4.2 The key issues
here will focus on the success of delivering culture change. Even
within local authorities, the culture between departments can
be very different. These cultures again will be different across
the health service, the police and the voluntary sector for example.
There need to be recognition that such changes in styles of working
and a shift in cultural attitudes of people working with children
is likely to take time.
4.3 Communication
is vital and staff will need to be brought along with change even
while the local authority and its partners will not necessarily
be able to be clear about when and where the journey will end
as this will be continually developing. Capacity to implement
this change is a big issue for authorities. DfES has only made
£20m available to be shared across all authorities and even
for those who have developed their change management proposals;
many do not have the capacity to deliver it.
4.4 Leadership at
both political and officer level is vital. It is political leadership
that will drive the change in authorities and develop a single
culture. The IDeA's member leadership programme will support
members to recognise the responsibilities of their role but the
time it will take to drive the agenda through must not be underestimated.
5.1 Inspection;
5.2 Ofsted has been
given the lead to develop an integrated inspection framework for
children and young people to reflect the change in delivering
services to children, young people and families. The Joint Area
Review will deliver this requirement. It will report on the outcomes
for all children in a local area 0 -19.
The LGA has raised a number of issues in relation
to the new inspection framework:
- Minimising Burdens on Local Authorities.
The inspectorates are striving to ensure that the new process
is manageable and will not increase the burden on local authorities
and partners to collate and provide information to feed into the
inspection process. Trialling with authorities of how data will
be collected is due to start in the late autumn. Authorities will
still be required to collect information for elements of current
statutory inspection requirements, particularly in relation to
service settings. For this to have the desired impact, the minimising
of the number of data sets authorities are required to collect
is important.
- Corporate Performance Assessment. The
Audit Commission's current thinking is that the Joint Area Review
and the corporate assessment should take place at the same time.
As the Audit Commission has already published an indicative time
table this will need to be revisited. The timetables of CSCI and
the Health Care Commission also need to match those of the Audit
Commission and Ofsted. All of these need to be tied together and
adjusted accordingly. The timing may also raise concerns as to
how the judgements obtained by the Joint Area Review are validated
before they are fed into the various Corporate Assessment blocks.
For ease of understanding by local authorities and
partners requests have been made to Audit Commission and Ofsted
that the scoring/judgements system and the language used are consistent
and do not create unnecessary confusion, across different sectors,
for example star ratings, numbering 1 - 4 and so on.
LGA have raised with the inter-inspectorate team
the need for joint trialling to give local authorities a sense
of how it all fits together.
Another concern for local government is the lead
time for authorities to prepare for Joint Area Reviews and collating
the necessary data as the current timetable is very tight.
- Accountability. Currently,
there is no common understanding of the term "children's
services authority" among the different Inspectorates. It
makes more sense to refer to the whole local authority and its
accountability for children's services, but there is clearly some
ambivalence which will require further clarification.
The Inspection framework focuses heavily on partnership
working. There is much expectation that the inspection framework
will be the vehicle to ensure partners such as schools fully contribute
to the integrated children's agenda. Our work with education
colleagues, such as Confed and others reinforce our concerns that
the framework without legislation will not be a sufficient lever
to ensure that all schools contribute. The risk has been made
clear to David Bell and DfES officials leading on inspection.
Listening to children; the role of the Children's
Commissioner;6.1
6.2 The LGA has not
played a significant part in the role of the Children's Commissioner,
but has supported many other organisations, particularly those
in the voluntary and community sector who have lobbied heavily
in the proposals in the Children Act.
6.3 The LGA supports
the establishment of a Children's Commissioner for England, but
is disappointed that the role has fewer responsibilities than
other UK Commissioners. The Commissioner must be able to report
directly to Parliament, rather than to a Secretary of State, and
must be able to hold inquiries into individual cases without being
commissioned to do so. Whilst we welcome the outcomes listed in
this section of the Act, the LGA is concerned that they potentially
exclude some groups of children and young people.
6.4 The LGA has supported
amendments made by the voluntary sector and children's rights
organisations which give the role of the Commissioner the same
functions as its counterparts, and ensure the wishes and feelings
of children are taken into account in other parts of the Act that
govern actions by the local authority and partners. The Association
also supported amendments that recognise in full the UN Convention
for the Rights of the Child.
6.5 The LGA led on
a probing amendment to establish whether the outcomes cover young
people who are involved in the criminal justice system. It is
also supported other organisations' probing amendments which sought
to ensure that young refugees, asylum seekers and children and
young people in poverty are also covered.
7.1 Working with parents
7.2 The LGA does not as an organisation have a policy
line on working with parents.
7.3 Working with parents requires particular skills,
similar to those particular skills needed when working with children.
These are not evident in everyone's training and will need strengthening
in the common core to succeed.
8.1 The creation, management and sharing of records, including
electronic databases;
8.2 The LGA supports improved information sharing
between agencies, as this is fundamental to ensuring that children
who are in need of a particular service or services can be quickly
identified. However it is critical that in tackling the issue
of information sharing, all agencies involved focus on managing
cultural and behavioural change amongst professionals as well
as technical processes.
8.3 The aspiration
of the Common Assessment Framework is one welcomed by local government
in terms of its aim to reduce the number of assessments children,
young people and families experience when trying to obtain
a service. There are detailed issues which require further exploration.
If the common assessment framework is to be effective particularly
in universal settings such as schools, additional training of
staff will be needed. Consideration will also be required as to
which staff would have the skills to undertake such an assessment.
There could also be workload implications as a result. The framework
should add value and not be seen as additional bureaucracy if
it is to achieve its aim. These issues link into the wider
children's workforce skills and training developments.
8.3 The DfES has recently, in the last few weeks, published
a consultation on Information Sharing Databases in Children's
Services: consultation on recording practitioner details for potentially
sensitive services and recording concern about a child or young
person to which the LGA will be responding.
9.1 ConclusionThe LGA would be happy to provide any
more information on any of the issues raised in this submission
if required.
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