News

It is welcome news that in the green paper Every Child Matters the government has adopted the key principles of Serving Children Well, the Local Government Association-led vision for children's services. These include a strategy for all children, a single assessment process and the integration of health, education and social services.

But local government and other key agencies have concerns about the green paper's prescriptive proposal requiring authorities to appoint a new post, director of children's services, to oversee education and children's social services.


The LGA has been calling for a designated lead member and named senior officer to be accountable for children's services so that it is clear where the buck stops. This is in line with a key recommendation in the Victoria Climbie Report that "the single most important change in the future must be the drawing of a clear line of accountability, from top to bottom." But councils must have discretion and freedom to decide which senior officer is accountable for children's services, according to the local circumstances.

Moreover, a director of children's services post, which oversees education and social services, is likely to lead to the merging of these two departments. Enforcing structural changes of this nature will serve only to undermine years of good work. The 36 councils piloting Serving Children Well have found that the most effective way to improve services is to build on what is already working well. They have also shown that improving joint working between agencies relies on deep-rooted cultural change based on widespread understanding of the need to better integrate services by everyone involved. These cultural changes, together with existing good practice, must be the foundation upon which structural changes are built. An enforced shake-up risks losing everything that is already working well at the expense of the provision of services for vulnerable children.


We and our colleagues from the key agencies and the voluntary sector will resist moves for a director of children's services to be appointed in every authority, and any changes involving this degree of prescription at a local level. We will fight to persuade the government of the case for local services to be shaped according to the needs of children, their families and communities.

Alison King is chairperson of the Local Government Association's health and social affairs executive.