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As the year draws to a close, social care pivots between the debates over children's services unleashed by the death of Victoria Climbie and the implementation of the children's green paper which the Laming report inspired.

The year to come will be about how we reposition social care and how we build the public's confidence in our effectiveness in providing services on their behalf. The social care world has somehow to get across to the public the reality that millions of people rely on our organisations, day in and day out.


But while the ink is still drying on the children's bill, expected in February, there remains a question about what the government's big idea for the future of social care really is.

The short answer is that there is no single unifying plan. The government needs us, but is not sure what to do with us. Social care is seen as part of a lot of other plans - for families, for children, for health, crime, antisocial behaviour and for building communities. Where would we start from if we were starting again with social care for children and young people, for instance? From where we are now? Would we invent social workers and social services departments?

All these questions are pertinent to the sweeping changes to social care and social services now being considered. Social services directors have been committed to working with ministers to help shape and deliver their emerging vision. It has been a great opportunity and a huge responsibility. But if this vision is to become a reality we need time to understand and work on some of the detail of the proposals.

If we are to get it right, we must ask realistic and challenging questions. We need to sort out how to hold a director of children's services to account for those services they don't manage and can only seek to influence. We need to ask how the new children's services dovetail with adult services and where disabled children fit in. Nor can we forget the importance of their parents' roles.

With new responsibilities come new costs. Where will the new workforce come from? Average social worker vacancies are at 9.2 per cent. But to get to a normal turnover level of 5 per cent we need 50,000 more social workers. There are 2.4 million staff already in the children's workforce covered by the green paper. Growth needs unprecedented co-ordination, as well as time and money.

Since 1990 there has been a huge variation in the way social services are delivered, particularly with the new Welsh and English unitary authorities. The "whales on the beach", as Terry Bamford, now a member of the General Social Care Council, described social services departments 10 years ago, are still there, still alive, but the tide is going out. It is difficult to see them ever being refloated.

They have been viewed with some suspicion by politicians locally and nationally. Demand and costs rise at a rate that outstrips inflation and government funding - much less than the same pressures within the NHS - but at an alarming rate nevertheless compared with other local government responsibilities.

Although most councils give services a high priority, they remain stretched and unable to deliver to expectation. Social services departments have also been bypassed in the creation of many of Labour's major programmes, such as neighbourhood renewal, Sure Start and the Children's Fund, with which we have a natural affinity.

Social services have been damaged and blamed for drawing our boundaries too clearly, for not being outward-looking enough. They are known only for a comparatively small number of highly publicised failures - with serious implications for the professionals.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the constant changes in legislation and organisational structures - and perhaps the performance assessment framework - standardised the job of social workers and other social care staff. The irony is that while the organisations that deliver services are as unpopular as the beached whales were in 1990, the need for those services is not questioned. Social work and social care skills and values are as relevant as ever, and there have been repeated assertions of confidence in social work and social care. They will survive even when redistributed across what is as yet an unclear map of organisations and initiatives.


There does not need to be a mass refloating of the beached whale. But nor should they be absorbed into education departments or the NHS - services that have consistently failed to deal with the people who need our services.

To be radical and comprehensive, social care must be brought back into the mainstream in its own right. How? We don't want a structural or organisational solution but one based on a framework of relationships and partnerships instead. Social services directors and their staff are viewed as the natural supporters of community development and social regeneration. We are the bridge between the NHS and wider local government, for example. Councils should be given broader responsibilities to build active and sustainable communities based on social justice, mutual respect, choice, independence and inclusion. In short, communities that care, backed up by services that deliver.

Social care should cease to be required to compensate for the failure of other services to be available to all. Services for older people must emphasise the importance of independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment, dignity and choice. Older people need the resources to plan their own lives and to take part in decisions about the full range of local services. The NHS is not the answer for social care. Social care may have some answers for the NHS.

It is time our services for adults and older people came out of the backwaters of the Poor Law and the workhouse. The National Assistance Act 1948 that replaced the Poor Law did not empower councils to supply a full range of services, even to older people, blind people, those with mental health problems or to children. There was no comprehensive family care set-up and little was done for people outside those categories.

This limited response still affects the way we operate. We are fenced in too tightly. The long shadow of the Poor Law has remained over social care to its detriment, a shadow which brings a familiar armoury of measures to sort out the deserving from the undeserving: rationing, eligibility criteria and means-testing.

Direct payments (where they are available) often have to be capped. Carers are not getting assessments and, if they do, can only receive a limited range of services. The best councils are offering choice, diversity of service provision, and promoting user-directed services but they are still based largely on individual needs and means tests. They are no less constrained by the Poor Law than those councils which are doing less well.

In this context, legislation to promote direct payments and the rights of carers sits uncomfortably. These are 21st century concepts in a financial and organisational context where demand is still managed through Poor Law principles.

Let's dump the Poor Law. The time is right to replace the framework of social services legislation, including the National Assistance Act, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 and aspects of community care legislation that have governed our adult services.

We should replace them with a statutory duty for local authorities to promote the economic, social or environmental well-being of their communities, built into a consolidated community care act.

Andrew Cozens is president of the Association of Directors of Social Services.