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A forthcoming Association of Directors of Social Services paper recommends that the government address recruitment, resources and training for children and families social workers. Here, the paper’s author, Alison Painter, makes the ADSS’s case.

Children and young people are our future, our single most important asset. As Gordon Brown says, they are 20 per cent of now and 100 per cent of the future. The experiences of childhood and the absence of love, care, security and education can crucially shape adult lives, as can the presence of poverty, discrimination and abuse.

In the past few years we have seen considerable progress in delivering social care services to the most vulnerable and excluded

children in the UK. Social services have developed new and innovative services to meet the needs of children. Services such as health, housing, education, social care and criminal justice are now becoming more integrated, and in many cases jointly commissioned and delivered, often through multi-agency teams. Also, there has been an increase in cross-departmental initiatives aimed at reducing social exclusion, and addressing inequalities of health, education and crime. There has also been a focus on involving and empowering children and families, and an increased emphasis on performance management and outcomes.

However, although these developments have gone a long way to improving the lives of many young people, there are still some alarming facts.

- One in three children are still living in poverty.

- Up to one in 10 children in the UK are suffering from some kind of mental health disorder and as many as one in five have suffered mental health difficulties at some time.

- There were 400,000 children in need (as defined by the Children Act 1989) living in England in February 2000, a 10 per cent increase since 1997.

- The number of children looked after by local authorities in the UK has risen by 13 per cent since 1994 - from 49,300 to 58,100 in 2000.

Whether today’s children become tomorrow’s responsible citizens is largely dependent on the opportunities they have to be members of a stable family, receive appropriate health care and have access to good education.

However, too many of our children live in unsatisfactory and unsafe environments. Too many have limited success in school and leave school unprepared for productive adulthood. All of this has considerable costs both in human and economic terms.

So how can we improve the outcomes for children and young people in the UK?

The forthcoming Association of Directors of Social Services paper, Tomorrow’s Children, which was developed from a seminar involving the ADSS children and families committee and key voluntary sector organisations, details the need for the following areas to be addressed immediately:

- A re-evaluation of the financial and human resources required to maximise social services’ capacity to assist vulnerable children and prevent child abuse and child murders.

- Similarly, there is a need for a hard look at the recruitment, training and morale of workers in child care services.

- The introduction of a three-year graduate training period for social workers, which must be fully funded.

- A reduction in the volume and weight of work that social

workers carry.

- A review of the impact of asylum seekers on children’s services.

- The appointment of a children’s commissioner.

The ADSS paper also makes recommendations about the further investment and development of services to children, young people and their families in the UK.

The ADSS believes that if social care is to meet the challenges of the next decade it needs to build systems around the child and focus on outcomes for children. Tomorrow’s Children explains some of the crucial factors involved in the development of a more outcomes-based approach for children.

Services for vulnerable children in the UK have grown up into a maze of inter-related programmes, which sometimes lose the ends we are trying to accomplish. Outcomes for children, young people and their families must be the primary focus. While most agencies have been working together for some time, and jointly commissioning and delivering services is in many areas well established, there is still more work to do on outcomes.

There is also a need to look more closely at how services are commissioned. Tomorrow’s Children raises one option, which would be to develop a strategic organisation responsible for commissioning all child care services, for example, education, social services, and youth services. This could be achieved by extending the concept of the children and young people’s local strategic partnership. Many local authorities are already looking at the opportunities for improving the service. Options include:

- Care trusts for children, on similar lines as detailed in the NHS Plan.

- Virtual trusts, where people remain in the same organisation, but agree the common outcomes and use of pooled resources, as highlighted by the Health Act 1999 flexibilities.

- A public and private partnership structure, bringing together local authority and voluntary and private sector staff with community members.

The way services are delivered could also focus on functions rather than organisations. It may be beneficial to have one assessment service to assess the needs of all children. This would prevent the scenario of children with similar needs being offered different services depending on which agency they presented to. For example, a child with special needs might go to a residential special school after visiting education services or become a looked-after child after going to social services.

The government has already recognised the importance of joint funding for inter-agency initiatives through the provision of flexible and pooled budgets under the Health Act 1999. However, this concept will need to be extended. If we are to jointly commission services on a larger scale, it is crucial that partnerships between statutory agencies and communities have access to funds to direct services where they are needed.

There is also a need to involve families much more closely in decisions about priorities, strategies and financing of delivery of services. This may result in setting up new governing structures in communities, which will be responsible for developing and implementing strategies for children, young people and families.

Actively shaping the future will involve clear leadership. Visible leaders will need to sustain the vision and message of change, keeping the focus on better results for children and families. Leaders will need to champion the cause for a more integrated and outcome-focused approach. Closely related to leadership is the recognition of the need to actively shape the type of culture where organisations can work across organisational barriers and focus on outcomes. Changing systems is as much about changing people as it is about changing policies and practices. Relationships need to be built where people are more willing to make commitments and trust each other.

This will need to involve a much clearer focus on a common understanding of what different professionals have to offer, what needs to be achieved, and the action necessary to achieve it.

The future for children presents many challenges. Two things will be important. The discipline to deliver the integrated services that children, young people and their families deserve, and the passion to make it happen.

Alison Painter is independent researcher with Creative Exchanges, a health and social care consultancy. She is the author of the forthcoming ADSS paper Tomorrow’s Children.