Final news reports from Community Care Live 2002

    All the latest news from Community Care Live 2002 staged
    at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London:

    Reports from Thursday 23 May (see below for reports from
    Wednesday 22 May, including speech from health minister Jacqui
    Smith):

    New guidance for infant disabled children

    Community Care Live delegates were the first to hear of draft
    consultation guidance on services for disabled children aged 0-2
    years, writes Natalie Valios.

    The department of health and department for education and skills
    set up a working party to develop the guidance. It comprised
    representatives from government, social services, voluntary
    organisations as well as parents of disabled children, and was
    chaired by Paul Ennals, chief executive of children’s charity
    NCB.

    About 3 per cent of children between the ages of 0-2 are
    estimated to be disabled.

    The guidance highlights ways to make life easier for their
    parents, including early diagnosis, accurate and timely
    information, joined up assessments, family-held records and key
    workers.

    Currently, parents often experience a lack of sensitivity at the
    point where the child is diagnosed; inconsistent patterns of
    services; lack of co-ordination; and a lack of information.

    “One mother had had 350 appointments for her 18-month-old
    disabled child,” Ennals told the audience.

    The guidance outlines proposals for a family service plan. This
    would be a written report of the assessment describing the child,
    family and the services they need. It would also name a
    keyworker.

    It is proposed that as part of the keyworker role, the worker
    would have a budget to be used to solve an immediate problem, for
    example paying for a taxi when it’s too complicated for a family to
    get a bus to the speech therapist, explained Ennals.

    Other suggestions include “debugging the system” by
    appropriately sharing information between professionals while
    protecting confidentiality, and providing practical support to
    families.

    Ennals is hoping that a “slab of money” will be announced in
    Chancellor Gordon Brown’s comprehensive spending review in the
    summer to help reshape and build on services for disabled children
    aged 0-2.

    After consultation, the resulting guidance will feed into the
    national service framework for children. Guidance for Sure Start
    projects working with disabled children aged 0-2 is also expected
    in a few weeks.

    “Together From the Start: services for disabled children 0-2 and
    their families” at www.doh.gov.uk or www.dfes.gov.uk

    President calls for £30,000 pay norm for social
    workers

    Some of the money the government has given to social services
    should fund pay increases for social care staff, said Mike
    Leadbetter, president of the Association of Directors of Social
    Services.

    Leadbetter, also heads Essex social services, said: “Some of the
    six per cent the government promised will need to go on salary
    increases.”

    He also said that average for experienced social workers should
    be £30,000 a year.

    When asked by delegates whether this should be an average for
    all local authorities, he said that this could not be achieved
    because councils will always pay differing rates. However, the
    market was pushing wages up to the £30,000.

    “When Essex paid an extra £2,000 to its social workers we
    took staff from neighbouring councils such as Hertfordshire and
    Suffolk. They then increased their wages attracting staff from
    their neighbouring councils. This process will continue to push up
    wages.” He also said that wage problems existed at all levels, for
    example “care workers earned £6 an hour but could go and stack
    shelves in a supermarket for £7.50 an hour”.

    Leadbetter also looked at other factors that could help improve
    recruitment and retention in local authorities. These included
    improving the culture of the organisation, offering career breaks
    and secondments, providing differing routes to becoming a qualified
    social worker such as open learning or in-house training, and using
    support or clerical workers to take on some of the non-essential
    social work tasks such as form filling.

    Government urged to set up national child protection
    board

    The government has been urged to set up a national child
    protection board to co-ordinate policies, writes David
    Callaghan.

    Norfolk social services director David Wright told Community
    Care Live delegates the board should be steered by a cabinet
    minister.

    Wright said: “We need government support when the cock-ups
    happen to ensure the other agencies are called to task. Where is
    the accountability in the other agencies, where it gets beautifully
    defused?

    He said all the different agencies must communicate more
    effectively: “We cannot be allowed to plough our own furrows.”

    He also called for area child protection committees to be put on
    a statutory footing, repeating a call from other organisations such
    as the Association of Directors of Social Services.

    Catherine Watkins, who is team manager for a children and
    families assessment team in West Sussex, said that other agencies
    should be more focused on child protection work, and she called for
    mandatory child protection training for staff from all
    agencies.

    Peter Beresford, who is chairperson of the user-led body Shaping
    Our Lives, said children must be heard in child protection cases,
    and asked why Victoria Climbie was not asked about her situation
    using a French interpreter.

    “The crucial and defining issue from the murder of Victoria
    Climbie is that no-one listened to her or spoke to her and no-one
    asked her about what was happening,” he said.

    Child sex abusers can be called ‘paedophiles’

    Nearly two thirds of child sexual abusers fulfil the same
    criteria applied to adult paedophiles, Eileen Vizard, clinical
    director of the Young Abusers Project, told delegates,
    writes Natalie Valios.

    Vizard said that children and adolescents under 17 cannot be
    given a psychiatric diagnosis of paedophilia as it is assumed that
    paedophile interest in other children does not occur before that
    age.

    The Young Abusers Project, now managed by the NSPCC, has seen
    330 cases since it began in 1992. Girls comprise about 10 per cent
    of cases. Learning difficulties, maternal abuse and an interest in
    sexually abusing animals were prevalent features in girls who
    sexually abuse other children.

    Almost 63 per cent of children presenting at the project had
    serious psychiatric problems. ‘If services are being set up
    without mental health input then these children are being deprived
    of the right help,’ warned Vizard.

    The project is hoping to get funding to carry out research into
    dangerous severe personality disorders in children. ‘We need
    to find ways of identifying the few children who will go on to
    commit very dangerous crimes,’ she added.

    Professionals must promote pre-trial therapy for
    children 

    Child care professionals must promote the use of pre-trial
    therapy for children who have been sexually abused, child sex abuse
    expert Tink Palmer told Community Care Live delegates,
    writes Lauren Revans.

    ‘All children now have a right mandated by government for
    pre-trial therapy,’ Palmer said. ‘We all need to make
    sure that we are in a position to offer it.’

    Palmer, who leads the Barnardo’s Bridge Way Project in
    Cleveland, said only 42 of the 483 children dealt with between
    December 1994 and January 2000 were required as witnesses in
    criminal proceedings.

    She said it was essential to push for intermediaries to be
    allowed to represent very young children deemed too young to be
    witnesses in criminal proceedings to ensure more convictions.

    ‘People like me should be the mediator that goes to court
    to say this is what happened to that child and it cannot be
    anything other than that because of the persistency and consistency
    of the theme of the child’s behaviour,’ she said.

    Children at the project who are due to give evidence in criminal
    proceedings are promised that everything will be done to prevent
    their case files being disclosed to a third party, but are not
    given an absolute guarantee.

    However, Palmer said that of the 42 cases over the five year
    period, she had been subpoenaed to produce files on only three
    occasions. Each time she had pleaded public interest immunity and,
    although papers were still referred to in court on one occasion, no
    information from any therapy sessions was revealed.

    Palmer stressed that the police and Crown Prosecution Service
    should be informed before any pre-trial therapy begins, but that
    they had never objected to it.

    She added that pre-trial sessions must be held on an individual
    basis and be well documented, and that the therapist must not ask
    questions directly related to the specific case or alleged
    perpetrator.

    Reports from Wednesday 22 May: 

    Children’s Fund head points to new intervention services in
    schools

    New early intervention services based in schools for children in
    difficulty are likely to be announced in the forthcoming spending
    review, according to the head of the Children’s Fund,
    writes Frances Rickford.

    Kathy Bundred said she hoped the new school-based services would
    be an example of new initiatives for children and young people,
    which are based on partnership changing mainstream services. The
    new services are most likely to be provided by voluntary sector
    organisations, and would give additional support to children who
    need it at an early stage.

    Sure Start’s head Naomi Eisenstadt said it was too early to know
    about outcomes for children, but said lessons were being learnt
    about how to deliver services to the poorest families. She said
    there was still a reluctance among some people to spend public
    money on children under five, although the impact of living in
    poverty was greater on young children than other age groups.
    Building services designed on community views was not always
    straightforward when there were very diverse views within
    communities.

    Every estate has six “loud mouths” who can absorb a high
    proportion of staff time, and discourage other parents form getting
    involved, she said. She also admitted that some Sure Starts had
    difficulty reaching out to those very vulnerable families who were
    reluctant to use services but needed support.

    She said that setting up the projects took much longer than they
    thought, and that many agencies found partnership working very
    difficult. Flexibility and very practical support was the key to
    building local confidence – and it was not possible to respond
    flexibly to local community needs if service models based on
    evidence of “what works” were imposed from above.

    She said many parents had gained a great deal from involvement
    in Sure Start, and there were examples of families trying to get
    housing transfers onto estates where there were Sure Start
    projects.

    Martin Barnes, director of the Child Poverty Action Group,
    welcomed the government’s “bold” pledge to abolish child poverty in
    20 years, but criticised ministers for failing to admit progress
    had been disappointing.

    Instead, when figures showed the number of children living in
    households with incomes less than 60 per cent of average had fallen
    by only half a million instead of the 1.2 million predicted by the
    treasury, the government “went into overdrive” to deny that they
    had failed to hit the target by using a measure of absolute instead
    of relative poverty.

    Barnes said if you “pick and mix” different measures of poverty,
    you undermine the credibility of the pledge itself. He pointed out
    that child poverty levels were still scandalously high in some
    communities, with 73 per cent of children in Pakistani and
    Bangladeshi families living in poverty, and 41 per cent of all
    children living in London.

    Minister announces details of new social work degree

    All future social work students will have to demonstrate their
    ability to work “confidently and effectively” with other
    professionals under new requirements for training announced by
    health minister Jacqui Smith, writes Janet
    Snell
    .

    She said the new three-year social work degree course would also
    focus on communications skills as well as areas such as law and
    human growth and development . She added that the new qualification
    would “put social work on a par with other graduate
    professions”.

    Smith said when she originally trained as a teacher, courses
    “lacked rigour” and theory and practice and were delivered as two
    separate strands. It was important to avoid the same mistakes in
    social work training.

    “Social work, like teaching, is a very practical job. It is
    about protecting people and changing their lives, not about being
    able to give a fluent and theoretical explanation of why they got
    into difficulties in the first place,” she told a packed hall.

    She said the new degree courses must ensure that theory and
    research directly informs and supports practice. “That is why
    students will spend a minimum of 200 days learning in practice
    settings,” she explained.

    The department of health is setting up a task force to increase
    the quality and quantity of practice placements. This will work
    with employers and higher educational institutions to ensure
    employers are providing enough high quality practice placements for
    tomorrow’s social workers.

    The minister said the government would be undertaking a full
    review of the funding of practice learning and will announce the
    outcome early next year.

    She also told the conference that the £15 million training
    strategy implementation fund, announced in February, is to be used
    to support 26,500 staff to undertake a range of training
    opportunities including induction training and improving National
    Vocational Qualification award structures by training staff to
    become NVQ assessors, mentors and verifiers.

    This would “enable employers to be able to train their staff and
    managers….. and promote a culture of lifelong learning and
    continuous professional development within social care.”

    Turning to the issue of joint working she stressed that health
    and social services must work together in partnership, and that
    could be achieved either through Section 31 partnership
    arrangements or care trusts.

    “Social care professionals have much to teach health workers
    about being user centred,” she said. “I believe that social
    services does have a special approach which the NHS can learn from,
    an approach that should be nurtured and maintained. But I also
    believe that social services can learn from the NHS.”

    Smith added that the department of health had been notified of
    over 100 sites that are using the flexibilities now available,
    spending over £1billion, with over half of them led by local
    authorities. And many more sites have expressed an interest.


    Click here
    to read a full text of Jacqui Smith’s
    speech.

    Local authorities fail homeless people with alcohol and drug
    problems

    Homeless people with alcohol and substance misuse problems are
    being failed by local authorities, delegates heard,
    writes Keith Sellick.

    A lack of resources and strict criteria about provision led to
    difficulties in referring homeless people with dual diagnosis to
    social services in Hampshire. Projects are having to use the
    voluntary sector, which is more flexible about treating clients and
    quicker in providing services.

    Trish Padwicke, who works for the Reachout project in Hampshire,
    said that even though local authority awareness of homeless people
    with dual diagnosis was improving, it was still necessary to use
    voluntary sector services.

    Rosemarie Driver, resettlement manager from May Place House in
    Basingstoke, which houses homeless people, said that referral to
    local authority alcohol services can take anything between four and
    12 weeks. She said that: “Local authority services did not give
    this client group enough recognition. Where they did provide
    services they were often understaffed or lacked resources.”

    Both speakers gave examples of clients where voluntary sector
    services were used because of lack of council provision or where
    clients did not fit council criteria. For example, one client
    “Simon”, who had a history of alcohol abuse, was not housed by the
    local authority because he had left his wife and child and so had
    made himself intentionally homeless.

    The session looked at Maca’s work in assessing homeless people
    and settling them in accommodation. The Reachout project works with
    other agencies to provide services for homeless people with dual
    diagnosis, and May Place House provides housing and support for a
    six-month period to enable clients to live back in the
    community.

    Government told delayed discharge focus damages other
    council services

    The head of community care at Kensington and Chelsea council has
    launched an attack on the government saying it is focusing on
    reducing the number of delayed discharges to the detriment of other
    local authority services, writes Anabel Unity
    Sale.

    Peter West told delegates: “Our beef in social services is that
    the only thing Tony Blair knows about us is whether our discharge
    rates are up or down. It is a very narrow and distorting
    focus.”

    He said councils were also concerned and anxious about health
    minister Alan Millburn’s proposals for local authorities to
    reimburse hospitals’ costs for each day after a patient who is
    ready to be discharged stays in hospital.

    West added that in order for housing for older people to be
    planned effectively a statutory partnership had to include
    supported housing providers, community care and primary care
    trusts. He said: “We have had enough of this separate planning from
    government.”

    Also addressing the same session, Anchor Homes director Barbara
    Laing said the government’s current policy of increasing the
    number of people being discharged from hospital meant more
    appropriate services needed to be provided.

    She said: “This policy requires rapidly expanding care capacity
    in the community. Such development of services relies on good
    collaborative working.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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