Written evidence submitted by 4Children
(LOCO 089)
4Children is delighted to have the opportunity to
submit evidence to the Localism Inquiry.
4Children is a leading national charity which undertakes
research, develops policy and delivers support for children and
families. The organisation has a strong track record of successfully
shaping and implementing public policy and led the call for a
number of leading policy reforms and interventions including Sure
Start Children's Centres and the development of childcare and
support for young people.
We are currently undertaking a major 18 month enquiry
into the needs of families which will report in October this year.
The Family Commission has spoken to thousands of families and
will put forward far reaching recommendations on all aspects of
family support. The organisation also has extensive experience
in delivery, working on commission to central government and local
authorities to deliver strategic support.
This submission draws on this experience to state
that:
¾ 4Children
believes in a community empowerment approach to localism with
democratic controls.
¾ We are
committed to supporting a strong and vibrant role for local communities
as shapers and leaders of local services and neighbourhoods and
are actively engaged in developing and supporting families and
communities to take on this role.
¾ Our
research shows that this is an approach which families and young
people would support.
¾ To achieve
this requires a major change in the approach of central and local
government including funding streams.
¾ However
communities will also need support to deliver this and there is
a major community capacity building exercise which needs to be
undertaken.
¾ Without
this local communities will not be able to take on a more active
role and the exercise will simply revert to "outsourcing".
We believe that there is a much greater potential to deliver a
more effective and accountable system which also builds the capacity
and human capital within the community.
¾ There
are some key services such as Children's Centres and Youth Provision
which have the potential to be at the forefront of such a change.
ABOUT 4CHILDREN
4Children is a leading national charity which undertakes
research, develops policy and delivers support for children and
families.
The organisation has a strong track record of successfully
shaping and implementing public policy and led the call for a
number of leading policy reforms and interventions including Sure
Start Children's Centres, the development of childcare and support
for young people. We are currently undertaking a major 18 month
enquiry into the needs of families which will report in October
this year. The Family Commission has spoken to thousands of families
and will put forward far reaching recommendations on all aspects
of family support.
The organisation has extensive experience in delivery,
working on commission to central government and local authorities
to deliver strategic support. 4Children has worked with all local
authorities to support the development of their services, including
childcare, in and around schools and has been contracted by DfE
to deliver support to all local authorities. The organisation
has high level strategic relationships or partnerships with a
significant number of these.
We also directly deliver a growing number of Children's
Centres, childcare, youth provision and broader family support.
This submission is drawn from our experience:
¾ As advocates
of support for children, young people and families.
¾ As architects
of models and programmes of delivery.
¾ As supporters
and developers of services such as Children's Centres, youth
provision and family support—advising and supporting local
authorities and central Government.
¾ As deliverers
of services including 25 Sure Start Children's Centres.
OUR STARTING
POINTS
4Children understands that much of modern local government
has grown from the municipal and co-operative movements in the
mid to late 19th century. More recently, we believe that local
government and to some extent the broader public sector have been
confused with delivering local services rather than facilitating
or being accountable for them.
4Children is drawn to a model of community empowerment
with democratic controls, however, we do not believe that this
has to be a contract management model reminiscent of Lord Tebbit's
view in the late 1980's that local authorities should consist
of a series of officers and members commissioning contracts. This,
in our view, is not about localism but about a difference in operational
management style. Our starting point is one of genuine engagement
and empowerment of communities to lead and shape all aspects of
the local neighbourhood.
We base this on a belief that:
¾ Communities
have the capacity to do much more for themselves—in both
shaping and delivering.
¾ Communities
are the solution not the problem.
¾ Communities
can deliver effective services at a lower price.
¾ Communities
can operate proper and appropriate governance arrangements to
do so.
Whilst we believe in a strong democratically accountable
and local public sector, for us, it is more an accountable and
facilitatory role.
10,000 families tell us they want a more localised,
involved approach to decisions
Our research with families shows that there is a
strong willingness from families to be involved in this way. Over
the last 18months 4Children has heard from 10,000 families through
its national inquiry into family life—the Family Commission.
Families have told us:
¾ That
Local authorities are seen as distant and not relevant.
¾ That
they do not believe that their views are reflected in decisions
about their local neighbourhood.
¾ That
they have views about their locality and local services and want
those to be reflected .
¾ That
they want to be able to shape and lead their own solutions.
¾ That
they need help and support to do this.
OUR MODELLING
IS BASED
ON A
NUMBER OF
KEY PRINCIPLES
¾ That
services should be good value for money.
¾ That
they should be "fit for purpose" to the current "more
for less" environment.
¾ That
they are based on clear evidence of what works.
¾ That
they deliver high quality, effective services.
To achieve this we believe that funding will need
to be flexible and transparent with accountability at all stages.
All our experience suggests that funding streams should be simple
with short chains of distribution. The more agencies and layers
involved and more complicated the process the less likely the
funding is to reach the frontline.
We are very aware of the need to reduce budgets both
centrally and nationally but do not believe that this should automatically
lead to a drastic fall in the level of services. We believe that
there is an opportunity to reshape and reorder how services are
delivered in a way that genuinely brings benefits to the communities
they serve. However, action will need to be taken by local authorities
now to enable this to happen. It imperative that local authorities
and central government avoids a "slash and burn" approach
to services which would run the risk of undermining the infrastructure
and service base which already exists. Strong strategic prioritisation
will be essential however, with a real opportunity to involve
individuals and communities in shaping decisions. It will also
be important to leave in place a programme which has future benefits
for example programmes of early intervention.
We believe that there is a broad scope for decentralisation
which should embrace all public sector and government agencies
with a default to exempt services. However, we do not believe
that there is a need for structural change to local authorities
rather assuming that operational change will be the driver. We
have been encouraged by the merger of Local authority Senior Management
Teams and back office functions in some areas and think that this
is an area which is worthy of greater consideration by many authorities.
The role of the Local Authority will therefore be:
¾ Democratic
accountability.
¾ Commissioning.
¾ Quality.
¾ Standards.
¾ Community
development.
¾ Provider
of last resort.
The extent to which decentralisation leads to
more effective public service delivery; and what the limits are
or should be of localism
There is a general census that size leads to economy
of scale. This is undeniable however, it does not necessarily
mean that if services are to be decentralised that it would lead
to increased costs. The cost associated with different models
of service delivery are influenced as much by the model of
delivery as they are by the size and scale of delivery.
There is a general principle that the chain of supply
between funding and delivery should be relatively short. Generally
speaking the length of the funding chain increases cost. Each
level of intervention in the funding stream adds to it, its own
bureaucracy and as a consequence its own cost. Conversely a short
funding stream whereby the commissioner and the deliverer are
closely linked tends to reduce bureaucracy, increase focus on
outcomes and ensure "more for less".
Taking this to its logical conclusion 4Children would
argue that funding streams and the commissioners should be as
close to the community as possible.
A further important principle about decentralisation
is flexibility in terms of funding. Highly regimented, single
strand funding regimes reduce flexibility, reduce creativity,
and increase bureaucracy. A more localised approach has the potential
to provide more flexibility in budgets, reducing waste as communities
respond to their particular needs.
With this in mind therefore it would be essential
that funding streams are simple—complicated submissions,
complicated returns, and complicated criteria for outcomes increase
cost and undoubtedly reduce the capacity or appetite for communities
to do things for themselves.
This does not mean that there should not be accountability
nor does it mean that there should not be a focus on auditable
trail of outcomes, merely common sense and perhaps applying "the
man on the Clapham omnibus" principle.
The closer that the deliverer is to the community
will:
¾ Increase
accountability to the end user client.
¾ Increase
greater ownership of the end result.
¾ Increase
reduced cost.
¾ Focus
much more on outcomes.
However there are some key limiting factors to decentralisation
which will need to be overcome. In our experience these are:
¾ The
size of the operational activity—it will be different for
different operations but clearly there is a cost implication/cost
reduction related to size.
¾ Capacity—limitation
to the capacity or willingness of a community to take on board
services "or do things for themselves"—however
4Children would argue that the local authority or indeed a facilitator
such as the third sector should be used to build that capacity
to avoid a postcode lottery.
The Lessons for Decentralisation from Total Place,
and the Potential to Build on the Work Done Under that Initiative,
Particularly through Place-Based Budgeting
4Children has been impressed by the developments
of Total Place and believes that there is much to build on in
the development of place based budgets and services.
Total Place gave important recognition to how a range
of inter-active and interwoven activities can come together to
have a major impact. It also recognised that bringing together
different funding streams increased flexibility and creativity
as well as the concept of inter-agency collaboration and a one
stop shop. The concept of place based budgeting recognises that
resources are driven by community needs and if pooled and used
flexibility have the capacity to exponentially achieve results.
This is an approach that 4Children is taking in its
Children's Centres with some success.
The Role of Local Government in a Decentralised
Model of Local Public Service Delivery, and the Extent to which
Localism can and should Extend to other Local Agents
To achieve our model of community empowerment, experience
suggests that the role of local government should be:
¾ The
provision of democratic accountability to a range of activities
carried out on behalf of the community.
¾ A commissioner
of services.
¾ A facilitator
in order to ensure that the community has the capacity to undertake
services much more for itself (It may need to use facilitators
in the third sector to deliver this and build the capacity in
the community).
¾ The
provider of last resort.
The local authority would hold to account performance
and quality across various communities to avoid a postcode lottery
in terms of provision and quality. The local authority may also
seek to either provide if there were economies of scale to do
so or purchase from other providers central technical or non-community
services such as the back office functions of finance and IT support;
senior management team.
The above model implies that economics of scale would
be applied to local authorities for non-community based services
such as the provision of "pan London" back office facilities
in respect of finance, IT support etc. These non-community services
would be purchased and managed.
Each community/borough would continue to have its
democratic independence but would buy in advice and support from
a much larger merged operational unit. However, in relation to
community services housing, children services, family services
etc these would be devolved to the community in order to ensure
the community provide services that it wants and needs and is
in control of the cost. As a consequence, the community may itself
seek to employ individuals to provide some of these services or
seek volunteers or the third sector to provide these services
on their behalf.
This model would mean that those services which affect
the community are devolved to a local one stop shop, are owned
locally, are provide in part by the community itself, through
the third sector, through staff employed directly by the community
or purchased from larger units where necessary.
All back office functions would be centralised to
achieve economy of scale. The inter-face of the community and
the back office function would be the democratic inter-face which
would be represented by "the local council".
It is important to stress that this is not a contracting
model but a much more socially responsible and community empowering
model.
The Action which will be necessary on the part
of Whitehall Departments to achieve effective decentralised Public
Service Delivery
To deliver the model in one sense Whitehall might
need to do nothing; cost savings and best practice might lead
local authorities to this conclusion themselves.
Whitehall does however need to consider the following
to put the context in place:
¾ Ensure
that funding streams are flexible.
¾ Reduce
bureaucratic overlay and reporting.
¾ Provide
advice and support on best practice models.
¾ Reduce
barriers to unofficial mergers at an operational level between
authorities.
¾ Review
TUPE requirements to ensure a low cost conceptual model does not
merely transfer staff costs from one environment to another but
allows a realistic discussion to take place.
¾ Enable
mixing and matching of funding streams from various departments
DoH, DoE, Transport etc.
¾ Be more
outcome and community focused.
The impact of decentralisation on the achievement
of savings in the cost of local public services and the effective
targeting of cuts to those services
Savings can only be achieved if activity is stopped
or done differently. 4Children is not advocating that children
services are reduced. But we are arguing that they should be delivered
differently.
There is clear evidence of our view that funds do
not always get to the frontline communities for which they are
intended. Indeed, our evidence suggests that between 30% and 50%
of funding for Children's Centres does not get to the local community.
We believe that passing services to the community
enables clear decisions to be made which will improve both their
effectiveness and the cost effectiveness:
¾ Services
can be brought from the third sector—which cost less than
local authority model.
¾ Communities
can undertake some of the services themselves and indeed the 4Children
model encourages this achieving further cost savings.
¾ Funding
streams can be merged to achieve greater impact achieving even
further cost savings.
4CHILDREN COMMUNITY
PARTNERSHIP MODEL
4Children is developing an innovative model to
build Community Partnerships to support a community based approach
to delivering children's services.
4Children is passionately committed to the goal
of joined up, community based support for all children and young
people 0-1 9 and their families. We are actively engaged in developing
this model in our local delivery and are working with a number
of local authorities to develop this approach. As stated, 4Children
believes that there are particular benefits and opportunities
for Children's Centres and wider services for children, young
people and families to be reshaped in this way. We are in dialogue
with the Department for Communities and Local Government and the
DfE on these issues.
October 2010
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