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As any new pop star knows, sustaining the interest of your audience after the initial blaze of publicity subsides is not easy. Audiences are increasingly demanding and are quick to dismiss those who don't keep the hits coming.

Two months into her green paper tour, there are signs the followers of new government act Margaret Hodge may be starting to wonder whether their delegate fee has paid for anything more than the same old tune.

Each of the children's minister's appearances follows a familiar pattern: an impassioned speech on what prime minister Tony Blair described as "the most far-reaching reform of children's services for 30 years" followed by a few audience requests for information on what resources will be available to make the plans a reality.


On the latter, Hodge is always markedly less forthcoming, leaving many feeling that the event was something of an anticlimax. But with the deadline for the consultation period growing ever closer, professionals are tiring of Hodge's stock response to questions about resources, which is that by ridding the system of duplication the green paper proposals will in fact save money rather than require more.

Moreover, there is a growing uneasiness about the government's reluctance to provide definite answers on the question of how much cash will be allocated. Radical reforms do not come cheap. However, there is an obvious implication that there are many savings to be made through some clever accounting, suggesting worrying comparisons with the Children Act 1989. Supporters of the Act believe its potential, especially around preventive work, was never fulfilled because government did not provide the necessary financial backing.

Alison King, chairperson of the Local Government Association's health and social affairs executive, says: "I am concerned about where the money is going to come from. I am sure there are economies that can be made because there is a lot of duplication. I do not think we have ever found that an organisational structure has saved lots of money."

Cost-cutting features heavily in the vision on preventive work laid out by government in the green paper. A child with a conduct disorder at the age of 10 will have cost the public purse £70,000 by the age of 28 - 10 times more than a child without behavioural problems, adds the report.

But although most accept there are some long-term financial gains to be made, the consensus is that, in the short term, money will need to be ploughed into implementing the green paper.

Anne Williams, co-chairperson of the Association of Directors of Social Services' resources committee, says: "My view is that children's social services is a difficult area to manage in terms of resource pressure. We should not go into this thinking there is massive duplication and savings to be made. There may be savings in 10 or 15 years but, in the short term, identifying families could to lead to increased referrals to social services."

The ADSS is surveying the 20 local authorities which make up the executive on the cost of implementing the structural proposals within the green paper, the outcome of which will be known this month.

The ADSS is also working with the Department for Education and Skills to identify all the existing funding streams that need to be brought together when the education and social care budgets are pooled in children's trusts. The first part of the survey is asking directors to assess the areas where they are under greatest financial pressure, such as out-of-borough residential places and foster placements by private agencies.

There will also be an examination of the standard spending assessment (SSA) for children's care compared with how much councils are actually spending on children's social services.


Williams says: "A lot of local authorities spend more on children's social care than the SSA and have to take money from other services to pay for it." She says there are also plans to examine the costs of the identification, referral and tracking system and questions on those pressures will be included in the annual ADSS survey. So far, says Williams, costs of £500,000-600,000 are being reported for the IT alone, without training the staff.

King says: "I do not think there is a local authority in the land that has all its social workers on PCs and mobiles." This indicates that the cost of installing the technology and providing training will be huge.

Massive investment will be needed to develop, for example, extended schools, another key part of the green paper. Above all, though, most agree that the biggest cash injection will need to go into the workforce.

Paul Ennals, chief executive of the National Children's Bureau, says the new lead professional role alone will be costly because "they will be carrying out an added function and have to work more hours".

He adds that more staff will be needed to cover more clients, in itself highlighting the biggest obstacle to implementing the green paper - staff numbers.

Researcher and former social worker Rachel Hetherington says more preventive work, which is at the heart of the document, will be possible only if workers are allowed the time to build relationships with their clients. But as the number of social workers dwindles that possibility becomes increasingly remote, especially when the sector's reputation is so poor.

King says: "We need the right number and calibre of staff. That is going to be costly. We need more speech therapists, educational psychologists and other workers all the way down the line.

"The other day I was in my car listening to the radio when I heard someone say that social work had become a pariah profession, and I thought 'is that really how people see it?' But that is what we are dealing with."

Caroline Abrahams, head of policy at charity NCH, says: "If the government wants to make inroads, especially in areas where it is difficult to recruit, they need more people and, at the end of the day, what you pay people is crucial."

Although the feeling is that there will be pots of money for initiatives such as Sure Start, there are fears that the government is optimistically expecting that the restructuring will be cost-neutral.

There will be a lot of finger crossing that next summer's spending review will prove fruitful for the green paper. As Ennals puts it: "The green paper proposes radical change and that costs money. If the government is not able to find extra money the changes will still happen, but much more slowly."