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Wales set to blur the boundaries and share its workforce There must have been many social services directors at failing departments who have looked across at their three-star neighbours and thought "if only I could get my hands on some of their workers".

This proposition could become a reality if plans by the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) for reforming the nation's poorly performing social services sector are given the go-ahead.

The plans promise a radical shake-up of how care is organised, managed and delivered in Wales, with the focus moving from individual local authority services to partnerships between groups of authorities. Services could be organised regionally, with councils sharing workers and using more private and voluntary sector providers.

The WLGA is to deliver the blueprint to the assembly in early spring. It will be implemented in 2006.

The development - the result of a two-day summit of social services directors, councillors and assembly officials last month - appears to have come out of nowhere. But many say it has its origins in the reorganisation of Welsh local government in 1996 and the impact this had on services.

It also seems to be out of step with recent trends in England, when the North East public voted three to one against establishing a regional assembly, which could have taken a wider view of organising care services.

However, unlike in England where the average local authority serves a population of 333,000, each of Wales's 22 councils serve a population of 136,000 on average. Combined with its rural nature, poor road network and higher deprivation and mortality rates, this has hindered organising social services in the past nine years.

During that time, Welsh social services departments have become synonymous with poor performance, with many criticised in joint reviews and public inquiries.

Chief inspector Graham Williams has added to the criticism. His 2003-4 report, published last month to coincide with the summit, highlights a lack of partnership-working and preventive services; problems with assessments, care management, leadership and user consultation; and inconsistency across services.

"In every authority there is something that is a good practice example," Williams says, "but we need to strengthen across all areas and authorities. We have communities of needs. Are services capable of responding to these?"

Cardiff social services director Chris Davies says there is "no doubt" Welsh health and social services have performed worse than their English counterparts, and admits "no one can quite put their finger on why". However, he says the size of Welsh councils hinders the development of services. "You have to wonder whether they have the strategic capacity to deliver the agenda."

The Welsh assembly has given this issue much thought. A consultation paper published in October, Making the Connections: Delivering Better Public Services, set out an agenda for streamlining and eliminating duplication in support functions, creating efficient procurement systems and making better use of private-public partnerships. This would save the assembly £600m by 2010 to reinvest in front-line services.

However, more pertinent for the social care blueprint, the paper also called on councils to explore the sharing of support functions and "work across boundaries and enter into joint arrangements when commissioning and delivering services".

What this means in practice is unclear. Councillor Meryl Gravell, lead member for social services at the WLGA, says savings could be made through better use of supported living and by offering more support and parental training to the families of children who would otherwise be taken into care.

"What the report shows is most councils are providing good services to some people, but a lack of money is stopping them providing that to most people," Gravell says.

"We want to work closer with neighbouring authorities, health, the private and voluntary sectors, and share good practice and officers so that, if one council has an expertise in a certain area like special needs or legal support for children's workers, we should use that rather than having it in all 22 councils."

Davies believes improving services will involve co-operation and collaboration but the mechanisms will vary. "It might be about [councils] sharing expertise and having joint functions, or perhaps delegating functions to other councils."


Davies thinks it likely the blueprint will pick two or three service areas initially on which departments can focus their collaborative efforts "rather than biting off a large chunk we can't chew". Child and adolescent mental health services, adults with learning difficulties and looked-after children would be the most obvious places to start, he adds.

Hugh Gardner, who is charged with helping to implement the recommendations in the Wanless report on behalf of the assembly, believes it will be difficult for councils to improve significantly with their existing resources.

"Wanless was saying we have to bring things together - we should look at how public services look as a family," the former director of Swansea social services says.

But Gardner acknowledges that Making the Connections has to be seen within the context of whether there is the workforce to deliver it. "There is only a finite number of the population that wants to be in health and social care," he warns.

Jon Skone, secretary of the Association of Directors of Social Services Wales, says the sector has to recognise what workforce and financial resources it has and use them as efficiently as possible.

"It is not about reducing the number of jobs but how we provide an improved service with what's available to us," he says. "Smaller councils are struggling to do everything, so if a council has a particular resource and wants to take the lead on it then fine, I'd be comfortable with that."

However, the WLGA believes changes to the role of some workers will be inevitable.

"Some people will have to give up things and there will be issues concerning the transfer of staff and reskilling but more jobs will be created at the front line. We need to sit down with the unions," says Gravell.

Making the Connections backs this up. It says "there is no reason to assume" jobs will decrease, but admits the shift in resources to the front line will see the reduction in support posts.

If, as seems likely, the blueprint puts greater emphasis on front-line services, social workers and clients should benefit. Perhaps this is a chance at last for Wales's much-maligned care sector to begin to recover its reputation.

• Making the Connections consultation paper from www.wales.gov.uk /keypublications/index.htm

KEY TO SUCCESS 

Graham Williams, chief inspector of the Welsh Social Services Inspectorate, says dissemination of best practice is particularly important to authorities taking a more joined-up approach to delivering services.

Key to that, he believes, is the development of the assembly's social care training and workforce development unit, whose job it is to disseminate best practice across Wales.  

Williams says: "By working with all authorities, it is encouraging partnerships to develop and showing that a good deal can be gained by authorities in collaboration with each other rather than everyone seeking to reinvent every wheel." 

But, he adds, in putting together its blueprint the WLGA will need to consider whether "a more specialist targeted improvement resource" - such as a central team of expert advisers - owned by local government is needed.