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Closer inspection of this year's performance assessment framework finds signs of improvement amid the usual controversy over poor performers, writes Katie Leason.

Health secretary Alan Milburn did his best last month to counteract any positive message about social services' performance with criticism and blame during his annual speech to the profession.

But, if you look hard enough, behind the negative picture he succeeded in painting, there is a glimmer of hope. The latest set of performance indicators show that, on the whole, social services departments are actually getting better.

In fact, a third list of councils that was lost among the headlines of the worst and the best performers was dedicated solely to the 20 most improved councils.

The London Borough of Lambeth's executive director of social services and health improvement Lisa Christensen believes progress measured in such terms of improvement, rather than success or failure, would be "more helpful", but that the time elapsed between the collection of data and its publication is also part of the problem.

Christensen says that in an authority such as Lambeth, which starts from a very low baseline and was named in the list of the worst 14 councils, changes are taking place all the time, but that recent improvements in the south London borough won't show up in performance indicators until next year.

"It's a bit like describing a toddler by using a picture of a new born baby and saying that is what it still looks like," she says.

Variation between councils has fallen for the second successive year, but there are still marked differences between councils'performances. For example, the number of users who said that matters relating to race, culture or religion were noted by social services staff varied from 7 per cent in Reading to 94 per cent in East Riding of Yorkshire. In Barnet, north London, just 39 per cent of child protection cases that should have been reviewed during the year were reviewed, compared with 100 per cent at Ealing Council, west London.

Some of these variations can be attributed to geographical differences in the costs of living, wages and services. Buckinghamshire, which was named in the bottom 14, has called for an urgent meeting with Milburn to discuss funding. Council leader David Shakespeare says it is hardly surprising that Buckinghamshire ended up in the bottom group as it is the worst-funded authority in the country. Over the past three years it has had to add £34.5m to centrally-allocated funds to pay for social care services, leaving education and roads underfunded. "The government is continually, and rightly, pushing for higher standards in social care. Unfortunately it is not providing enough money to fund these," says Shakespeare.

Of the comparable performance indicators, 18 show an improvement between 1999-2000 and 2000-1, three show deterioration and two have remained at the same level. While the government will examine all of the results, it is likely that those that impact directly on national targets will come under particular scrutiny.

The proportion of young people leaving care with at least one GCSE or GNVQ has gone up from 31 per cent in 1999-2000 to 37 per cent in 2000-1, but this is still a far cry from the national priorities guidance target for at least 50 per cent of children leaving care to be achieving this by the end of this year and 75 per cent by 2002-3. As the actual grades attained are not published, it is hard to assess the progress being made towards the public service agreement target the Department of Health has with the Treasury to increase to 15 per cent by 2003-4 the proportion of children leaving care with five GCSEs grade A* to C.

Only 9 per cent of young people leaving care gained a GCSE or GNVQ in named and shamed Richmond-upon-Thames, south west London. Strategic director of caring for people, Peter Wilson, says that the council recognises that care leavers' qualifications need addressing and has entered into a local public service agreement with the DoH. However, he also explains that the poor performance on that particular indicator is partly due to the "very considerable" number of unaccompanied young asylum seekers who have limited English.

Hertfordshire, which has a joint education and social services department, achieved a higher than average score on this indicator. Corporate parenting officer Felicity Evans says the council is able to offer the children it looks after a "far more rounded educational experience" as a result of the joint service and unreservedly recommends it.

"The joining up of our services has brought huge benefits to the education of the children we look after," she says. "We're working right across whereas before social services wouldn't have had access to education advisers because they work for education. We can now work in a joined-up fashion and share our expertise, knowledge."

With a national public service agreement target to increase the numbers adopted from care by 40 per cent by 2004-5, adoption is also a government priority. Bury Council, named on the improvers list, was singled out two years ago for doing badly on this, but the latest indicators show the council achieving well above the average. Head of children's services and modernisation Fran Thomas says that the improvement reflects an effort by front-line staff, who are clearer about where to devote their attention as a result of better performance systems, as well as the impact of Quality Protects funds.

Chairperson of the children and families committee of the Association of Directors of Social Services, Rob Hutchinson, says that if the progress on adoption is maintained, then theoretically the government's target should be reached.

He says: "However, predicting adoption is not that straightforward and figures will ebb and flow from year to year. It is vital that social workers and managers concentrate on meeting the individual needs of every child rather than trying to fit them into a target."

Under the national minimum standards for older people, introduced under the Care Standards Act 2000, care homes must provide 80 per cent of places in single rooms by 1 April 2007. The performance indicators show that many councils are already surpassing this target, but a few still have more to do. Stockport, which fell into both the bottom 14 and the 20 best improvers, only achieved 77 per cent on this indicator but believes that it is on target, despite facing a local care home crisis.

In another of its public service agreement targets, the DoH has made helping older people to live independently a priority. The indicators show that the numbers of older people being helped to live at home per 1,000 range from 37 to 215 per council. Hilary Simon, director of social services and housing at Windsor and Maidenhead, another of the poorly performing councils, describes this indicator as a "blunt instrument" for authorities that are affluent. "What we put our energy into is good advice about welfare benefits, for example attendance allowance, and then older people often go and arrange their home care themselves with their own money," she says.

The ADSS and Local Government Association have already described the data derived from the performance indicators as "questionable and limited", and councils up and down the country have expressed dissatisfaction with them as a form of assessment. Blackpool, for example, found itself in the bottom 14, partly for failing to return its information on time.

Stockport's director of social services Jean Daintith acknowledges that, while they're far from perfect, indicators have to exist: "They have flaws but we need to use them for us, not against us. We need them to demonstrate our improvement."

Whether the new star-ratings system for councils announced by Milburn in October will improve the way performance indicators are used remains to be seen. But, with Milburn's promise that councils' performances and ratings will from now on be judged on the results of a "more rounded assessment", there is at least hope.

Councils showing most improvement

Blackburn with Darwen

Bury

Cambridgeshire

Cornwall

Darlington

Essex

Halton

Kingston upon Hull

Kirklees

Knowsley

Newcastle upon Tyne

Nottingham

Peterborough

Rochdale

Sefton

Somerset

South Gloucestershire

Stockport

Thurrock

Tower Hamlets

Guidance outlines policy's first stage

Bert Provan, head of the Supporting People programme, talks to Anabel Unity Sale about putting the framework in place and how he sees the policy working with social services

Christmas has come early for Dr James Albert Provan, otherwise known as Bert, project director of the government's Supporting People programme.

His cherished gift is the first two sets of guidance, after seven consultation documents, on the new funding regime for supported housing, which were published this week.

From April 2003, the Supporting People policy will transfer responsibility for housing-related support from a centrally funded housing benefit system to individual local authorities' ring-fenced budgets.

The Interim Guidance¹ details one-off tasks that councils will need to complete before 2003 in order to put Supporting People in place, while administrative guidelines on how it will operate are contained in the Steady State Guidance.²

Organisations will be able to feed back comments about the documents to Provan and his colleagues at the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions until 14 December. Final versions of both will be published in January 2002 and the Department for Work and Pensions will issue guidance on the first year of funding for Supporting People next April.

Although Supporting People is a housing policy, its implications for those in social services are far reaching. Alongside representatives from local health, housing and probation bodies, social services will sit on every English and Welsh council's commissioning body for Supporting People services.

The key task facing commissioning bodies, according to the Interim Guidance, is the production of a shadow strategy for the DTLR by September 2002. It should detail their vision of how Supporting People will contribute to the delivery of local strategic priorities and needs, and provide a baseline supply map of current provision.

The commissioning bodies must also ensure that interim contracts will fund the continuation of current supported housing services, and ensure that financial and accounting systems are in place to make payments for services.

Some are concerned that the most vulnerable and challenging users will not have their needs met by the Supporting People budget. Provan is adamant that this will not be so, and that it is something the mapping exercise should pick up on.

"If an authority says that in 2002 it has 100 places for ex-prisoners (in a hostel) but by 2004 it plans to have none, then we will say sorry, but they cannot do that," he explains.

Provan also denies that, with all that is expected of social services, there is a risk they will have "Supporting People fatigue" by the time it goes live: "There are services out there that could be used better and social services are being given the opportunity to influence how to make best use of the services."

The programme should also build on existing relationships between social services and housing departments. "Identifying the importance of housing to a social services client is part of the improved understanding that the programme should bring through partnership, strategic planning and the commissioning process," he says.

In terms of how Supporting People will fit in with all the other initiatives that social services are involved in, Provan says that far from seeing it as an additional burden, departments should think of it as "another building block" to help them deliver their strategies.

"What an authority should do is ask itself how housing-related support services can help it deliver its mental health strategy," he argues.

Pressed on more specific developments, such as the new care trusts being brought in under the Health and Social Care Act 2001 to provide health and social care services for certain groups, Provan is less clear about how Supporting People will fit in. He admits he has not given much thought to how the two initiatives can avoid duplicating work.

"Where Supporting People will be in five years, I really don't know," he confesses. "This programme will continue to develop in response to the emerging new structures from health and social services."

¹ Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, Interim Guidance, DTLR, 2001

² Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, Steady State Guidance, DTLR, 2001