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Denise Platt, the shadow chairperson of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, spoke to Community Care’s news editor Lauren Revans about her new role and the government’s key social care policies.

Denise Platt: Sorry I’m late. I thought it was only right to meet in the new office of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, not at the Department of Health. We only go there when we need to do battle.

Lauren Revans: How are you going to make sure that the CSCI is more than the sum of its parts?

DP: If you look at its legislation, you find out that it makes it more than the sum of its parts and gives it new responsibilities and a wider scope, and much more opportunity to look at social services in a very broad way. So the legislation actually gives it the framework. For example, the first line of the legislation gives us the duty to improve both local authority social services and regulated services. We have a new responsibility where we can comment on research, we can commission research, we can undertake value for money studies. We can do a whole range of activities which none of the individual bodies could do. And there’s the added advantage that we can bring all those things together. It will look very different. Our organisations will be new. It won’t look like a bolted on structure. It will be different.

LR: How are they going to ensure that the identity of social care and social work isn’t lost as, on the ground, traditional social services departments get dismantled and restructuring gathers pace?

DP: Ourselves, we see the commission being a very strong voice for social care because we will know what social care is capable of achieving, we will know what resources are deployed across social care, we will have an interest in the service user, we will be talking to service users. We don’t just intend to be a silent organisation. We will have things to say about the services users receive and, in some way, be a voice for them as well. So we’re not going to sit there and wait to be asked.

LR: But how will that protect the identity of social work?

DP: I don’t think any national organisation can protect the identity of social workers. It is down to social workers, and the organisations that employ them also have a responsibility to ensure that social workers are supported, that their professional development is supported. We as national organisations can underpin that, but we can’t do it on behalf of. And it’s a nonsense to expect national organisations to do that.

The silence of social workers speaking up on behalf of social workers is deafening. And that’s what makes social care vulnerable, not what national organisations do. I mean nurses are not exactly silent. Doctors are not silent. Doctors don’t rely on the Commission of Health Audit and Inspection to speak on behalf of health. Nurses don’t rely on them to speak on behalf of health. They speak on behalf of themselves. And together they are a very powerful coalition.

LR: A few months ago, we were told by the Department of Health that Ofsted was definitely not going to be given responsibility for the inspection of children’s services. But now Ofsted’s lead role has been confirmed in the children’s green paper. What do you say to people who are concerned about education targets and values taking precedence over social work targets and values?

DP: Ofsted is taking the lead role in developing an integrated framework. And we are all involved in that. But the CSCI is not transferring any of its responsibilities to Ofsted, and nor is any other inspectorate. We will be inspecting social care. We will be inspecting with Ofsted with the whole range of inspectorates, as we do now. It just means that we will be doing it in a framework where how we do it will be co-ordinated as well as what we do.

Every local authority has a proportionate and co-ordinated inspection plan which is already fed into, and we would hope to make all the inspection processes as integrated and co-ordinated as possible. And looking at children’s trusts, that’s the integration that we are trying to work out.

We clearly are working on an integrated framework now in the light of what we know the policies are likely to be. But, don’t forget, we are going to have a national service framework for children, which is a very large programme, and so we will have to look at the inspection framework again when that is published. And that clearly will have to involve the commission and CHAI very substantially.

The inspections of older people’s services will also be carried out by CSCI and clearly, where necessary, we will be working with CHAI. And we will also be working with the housing inspectorate.

Inspectorates don’t work in isolation these days. They never have. They always work in coalition. But in terms of powers, responsibilities, duties, the powers and responsibilities of CSCI will be much more than equivalent inspectorates.

LR:  CHAI chairperson Ian Kennedy said recently in a speech that he was concerned that all the focus in the green paper was on education and social services, and the models for inspecting them would not be appropriate for inspecting the aspects of health that fall under CSCI’s remit. What do you say to that?

DP: I think he’s right. That’s why you have to work on an integrated approach. Because you need to look at the different elements from the perspective of people who know about what is a good standard of service in those areas. It doesn’t mean you won’t do those things together. Doing things together doesn’t mean you have to look at each element of service in the same way. But you will look at a common outcome for children. Together, you are looking at what the outcomes for children are. Education, social services and health would want the same outcome for children. But the contribution of education, social services and health to achieving those outcomes will be different. And we will need to look at how effective each element is at delivering the common outcome. And you may need different models to look at health, social care and education. But that doesn’t mean to say you can’t do it in an integrated way. And I think that’s where Ian Kennedy was coming from and that’s where I would agree with him.

LR: You were still at the DoH when negotiations about the internal reshuffle of the department all came about. People were very concerned at the time about the down-grading of social care, even before children’s social services were moved to the Department for Education and Skills and the appointment of a junior community care minister. Was the voice of social care heard during those negotiations, because a lot of people feel let down by the loss of 200 social care posts within the department on top of the departure of the SSI?

DP: Most people working in children’s services see bringing together the majority of policy functions in government that deal with children as actually a good thing to do. It gives a critical mass in government to look at children’s policy.

I have to say that the DfES has been very welcoming indeed to social care. They have set up a good network with directors of social services. They are actively recruiting a director general of children’s services. They have involved me in that process and I shall sit on the final interview panel. And they are looking actively to try to get very senior expertise in the new directorate in the DfES.

The DoH has the lead responsibility for social care overall. Even though children’s social care policy is now in the DfES, it’s the DoH that’s responsible overall for workforce matters, overall responsible for matters to do with social services generally.

Ironically, the department’s ‘change programme’ means that they are actually quite slow in engaging social care differently in the DoH at the same level the DfES has done. I don’t think the DoH wishes to have any less engagement with social care than DfES or indeed than it had when the SSI was sitting in the department. It’s just that the change programme is taking longer, I think, than they or anybody else expected. And the same sorts of processes that DfES has put in place are not yet there in the DoH.

The DoH is undertaking a change programme about the whole of the department. DfES took on a new function within its department. The scale of the change wasn’t the same. But I’m sure that the DoH, if challenged, would not want to lessen its commitment to social care. It’s just taking a long time to organise it.

LR: And you feel that social care got a fair voice at the beginning of those negotiations and there wasn’t a down-grading of social care when it was decided not to have a social care lead within the department?

DP: Just having one voice for social care in the DoH is inadequate. The issue for the DoH is that it needs to understand social care to the same level that it understands health. And if you just have one person with a social care title in the DoH, then they are the only person who thinks about social care. What is necessary in the DoH is that the department has to understand the whole of the industry of social care, which employs a million people, and has a private sector, a voluntary sector and a statutory sector. The DoH has responsibility for the totality of that sector. And if the DoH is going to give strategic direction to health and social care, then everybody who works in it must understand when they say ‘and social care’ what it means. If you only have particular people with a social care label, only those people will understand.

So, the challenge for the department in its change programme is, yes to have people who understand social care, but their role should surely be to help the rest of the department to raise its game. And that’s what the DoH change programme has really got to do to: rise to the challenge. The DfES is trying to raise its game, understand social care, and bring in people who can actually give social care advice and has set up a whole range of frameworks for consultation.

The DoH has to demonstrate that it can do the same in the context of its total change programme. The department ought to be setting up forums with directors of social services, with the private sector in social care, with the voluntary sector in social care. It ought to understand how the voluntary sector in social care services operates as well as it understands how private hospitals run. It’s about a way of engagement with social care, not just thinking we’ve got one person, they’ve got a social care label, their feet are under the table, we’ve done it. Actually, they haven’t.

LR: You mentioned performance indicators, which obviously feed into star-ratings. Have you got plans to develop the star-rating system in terms of social services, and will children’s trusts be given star-ratings?

DP: It’s too early to say.

LR: Do you think the government is running before it can walk in relation to children’s trusts?

DP: I think the government will have to listen very carefully to the responses to their consultation document. There are quite a lot of councils out there who think that the green paper means that they have to dismantle integrated services that they have set up which they feel are doing well. I’m sure that that’s not what the green paper intended. And it would be important that in the response to the consultation that the government made it clear that, where services were achieving the outcomes that they want for children, that the structures delivering that could continue.

I do feel very strongly that restructuring of children’s services has to be thought through very carefully. I have seen enough as chief inspector of SSI in the restructuring of children’s services where proper risk assessments have not been done, where people become very pre-occupied with re-organising the service, and the children’s needs are overlooked. Continuity of service for very vulnerable children must be an issue that managers involved in restructuring children’s services always keep in their sight.

LR: You said that, where integrated services were achieving the desired outcomes, they should be allowed to continue as they are. But Margaret Hodge said recently that she wants a children’s trust in every area by 2006.

DP: I think the government needs to make it clear what that means. They made a commitment to listen to the lessons of pathfinder trusts, so they really must listen to the lessons.

There are a lot of people who are developing integrated services now without the label of children’s trust that could become a children’s trusts on the basis of what they now do. But some of those have the impression that they must unravel what they are doing and do it differently, even though they may have education, social services and health within the same organisational framework doing very well. I think, in the response to the green paper, the government needs to make it clear that it doesn’t want good structures being dismantled for the sake of it.

LR: You’ve got no qualms about the commission’s independence - you feel totally independent of the DoH?

DP: I felt independent when I sat in the DoH, let alone now. I did have one comment from one minister, who said to me ‘Denise, I can’t imagine anything that you would say when you are independent that you haven’t said with some force while you’ve been in the department’. I took that as a compliment. I don’t have any qualms about independence, and I don’t think we will have any in the future.