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"We only go to the Department of Health when we need to do battle," explains Denise Platt, shadow chairperson of the soon-to-be-created Commission for Social Care Inspection, before our interview has even begun.

In June, Platt left both her jobs at the DoH, director of children's, older people and social care services, and chief inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate. She is at pains to prove to anyone who might question her independence that she has severed her ties with Richmond House. "I don't have any qualms about independence, and I don't think we will have any in the future," she insists.


The chancellor Gordon Brown announced the creation of the new independent inspectorate in his budget statement in July 2002. He proposed a non-departmental public body operating at arms length from the government, taking over the duties of the SSI, the National Care Standards Commission, and the joint review team.

Three months into her new job, Platt is obviously frustrated that the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill that will underpin the commission's creation and enable her to get on with the task in hand has still not made it through parliament.

She wants to ensure the CSCI is ready for lift off in April 2004, with a full complement of staff. But while the bill remains at committee stage, progress will be harder - although permission from the Treasury to spend money in spite of the absence of legislation will undoubtedly help.

Any suggestion that the new social care inspectorate will be no more than the sum of its parts is rejected by Platt. She insists the commission will have new responsibilities and a wider scope.

"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 and commission research, we can undertake value for money studies. We can do a range of activities that none of the individual bodies could do. And we can bring all those things together."

As part of this duty to improve regulated services, Platt hopes to work with providers in the public, private and voluntary sectors to develop a system that recognises good performance - possibly similar to plans for lighter-touch inspections for the best performing councils.

"There is no incentive for people to improve if we're always looking at the minimum. People can be encouraged to improve if they are recognised when they actually provide above the minimum. So we would like to discuss some of those things."

Although one of the commission's objectives is to demonstrate to the public how additional social services money is being spent, Platt denies that this will mean a greater emphasis on targets and cost-cutting.

"We've been trying to ensure that the service users actually reap the benefit of the additional money that's been given to social care. That's the ministerial intention.

"What I have always said, and what we will continue to say in CSCI, is that our goal is improved services for service users. Targets, and performance indicators are signposts to help people know whether they are providing better services for service users. They are not ends in themselves."

This commitment to "championing the needs of older people, adults and children" is unflinching. However, Platt's commitment to the social work profession at a time when traditional structures are being dismantled is less convincing.

She envisages the commission being "a very strong voice for social care" and working with the General Social Care Council, the Social Care Institute for Excellence and training body Topss to provide "a combined leadership for social care". But she says it is a nonsense to expect it to protect the identity of social work.

Platt believes rather that the onus is on social workers themselves, and the organisations that employ them.

"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.

"Doctors don't rely on the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection to speak on behalf of health. Nurses don't rely on other bodies to speak on behalf of health. They speak on behalf of themselves. And together they are a very powerful coalition."


Platt also denies that changes taking place at a national level have been detrimental to the voice of social care. She defends the DoH's change programme, which will see the number of social care posts within the department cut by two-thirds and no one with a social care background at the top table - despite it being attacked by her successor at the SSI, Averil Nottage, for sending out the message that the department does not consider that social care matters.

"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."

But Platt admits that the change programme is taking longer than envisaged and that the DoH has been slow in engaging the social care sector. She believes that, here, the DoH could learn something from the actions of the Department for Education and Skills since taking over responsibility for children's social services. "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."

She says the department ought to be setting up forums with directors of social services, and with the private and voluntary sector providers. It ought to understand how the voluntary sector in social care operates in social care as well as it understands private providers in health care. "It's about a way of engagement with social care, not just thinking we've got one person with a social care label, their feet are under the table, we've done it."

The move of children's social services to the DfES in June was followed last month by the announcement in the children's green paper that the education watchdog Ofsted would "take the lead in bringing together joint inspection teams".

Platt is keen to stress that this is about nothing more than developing an integrated framework and co-ordinating the inspection processes, and will not involve the CSCI transferring any of its responsibilities to Ofsted. "We will be inspecting social care. We will be inspecting with Ofsted, with the 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."

Prompted by concerns from those working in children's health services, Platt also stresses that, just because inspections are integrated does not mean methods need to be identical.

"Doing things together doesn't mean you have to look at each element of service in the same way. Education, social services and health would want the same outcome for children. 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."

Platt is bullish about the commission's potential. She and her transition team have just six months before the body is supposed to become operational to sell themselves to staff transferring to the new body, the social care sector, and service users. You can't help but think it will take more than a few peers and backbench MPs to stop her now.