Cambridgeshire Council can be forgiven for puffing up its chest and having, well, for want of a better word, a big head. It believes that it is on the road to enlightenment in terms of its children’s services and is proud of its efforts.
The council is among those few local authorities well on the way to meeting the government’s requirement for there to be children’s trusts established in all areas by 2008. There is no statutory requirement for councils to do this, but the government has made it clear that their services will be inspected on the basis of a degree of joint working and partnership only possible under a children’s trust framework.
Cambridgeshire began work on integrating its children’s services in the summer of 2003. Although it steers clear of calling the expected outcome of its organisational and cultural change a “children’s trust”, the goal of Cambridgeshire Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership is exactly what the government anticipates local authorities will achieve. The group comprises 21 organisations and includes social services, district councils, primary care trusts and voluntary bodies (see panel). Its aim is simple: to improve the well-being of children and young people in Cambridgeshire from pre-birth to 19.
So far four consultation documents have been issued to relevant stakeholders about the group’s plans and consultation meetings have taken place with children, young people and their parents and carers. In one consultation document, Ian Stewart, chair of the partnership, writes that it will take many years for these changes to be fully implemented and for children, young people and their families to realise the full benefits. “We have begun a challenging journey,” he says.
Over the next couple of months the partnership’s formal proposals will be presented to the council’s decision-making bodies and its partner agencies. A two-year transition plan is due to commence in April and by this time senior managers within the council’s children and young people’s services are expected to be in post. By April 2006, Cambridgeshire expects to have completely integrated its children’s services. There is little doubt that the plans are ambitious - so what do the staff think about the process and what do they hope to achieve?
Eric Robinson, Cambridgeshire’s director of social services and children’s services development, is a man with a plan. In fact, a sizeable chunk of this plan is scrawled in red marker on the white board hanging in his office at county hall. His eyes light up when he explains why Cambridgeshire started integrating children’s services before the government advised councils to do so. “If you actually believe the rhetoric of building services around the needs of children and young people then you have to do something different to deliver that, otherwise it is all fine words and no action,” he says.
Robinson was recruited from Enfield Council in 2003 to run social services, with a specific duty to lead the integration agenda. Cambridgeshire was already in the process of integrating its adult services with health services and this laid the foundations for adapting those for children. As well as the strategic partnership, a children’s task group was established, which Robinson heads.
Robinson describes Cambridgeshire’s consultation process as “the most elaborate” he has been involved with during his 10-year experience of strategic change management. The approach seems to be paying off, he says, as most practitioners and agencies back the development. “This is about hearts and minds,” he says. “These are public servants who came to do something different for children. What this debate should be about is how they can do what they came into the job to do.”
The biggest challenge the authority faces over the next 18 months is “keeping the show on the road and managing the change at the same time”. Not surprisingly, Robinson has little doubt that this can be achieved.
Cambridgeshire Council is responsible for 253 schools, including nine special schools. It is the education professionals working with children at risk or with special needs who have most welcomed the plans to integrate children’s services, says Andrew Baxter. This is because they already strive to work effectively with their health and social services colleagues, he says.
Baxter says an integrated service with one department, one budget and one assessment process will mean that time won’t be wasted on bureaucratic arguments. “We can get on with the professional job of making the best possible provision for the youngster.”
For Baxter the real test of whether or not the integration proves successful will be if head teachers receive the support they need to respond efficiently to the needs of the more vulnerable children. “If we are successful with this then the group of children who are underachieving at the moment will begin to be able to achieve more,” he says.
Baxter is confident that education professionals will get better at referral and assessment but he is anxious for safeguards to be put in place to ensure that education continues to perform well in areas where it already does so.
Having doughnuts in team meetings will not persuade staff that Cambridgeshire’s plans are going to work. This is the conclusion of head of youth offending Tom Jefford.
“It is about slowly establishing trust and moving forward at a pace that people feel comfortable with, which isn’t always going to be easy.” He says professionals will need to suspend their anxieties and “just go with it”.
Jefford has worked for Cambridgeshire since 1993, when he joined as a juvenile justice worker. In 1998 the council’s youth offending team was created and he saw the amount of effort it took to build new relationships with other agencies. The current moves towards integration are a major step forward, he says.
Integrating children’s services could have a positive effect on the work of Jefford’s 45-strong team. He says there will be important gains in the ability to identify children who are at risk of offending.
While some people are “feeling brave” about the impending change, Jefford admits that others are defensive.
But who are the most hesitant, those at the top or those on the front line? Jefford says that people’s job titles have little to do with it; practitioners and managers are equally nervous about the changes or in favour of them.
So what is Jefford’s worst case scenario? “That we concentrate on the stuff in the middle rather than the hard edge of child protection or the very focused activity that specialist services need to have and are accountable for,” he says.
Whether social workers will even have a job after the changes is one of the key concerns for Fiona Van Den Hout. As a senior social worker in the children and family support section of Cambridge City children’s team, her fears are understandable. “You feel like you are standing on the edge of an abyss. People are thinking ‘am I going to have a job, will my role be the same?’”
While Van Den Hout supports the integration of services for children and families she admits that she and her colleagues gasped with surprise when they heard the plans: “It was a huge concept to imagine.”
But she backs the move, saying that it builds upon the good practice already being done across the county. The biggest benefit of changing how practitioners operate, according to Van Den Hout, will be improved lines of communication.
So what does she hope to gain from the experience? She is keen to build on her relationships with other agencies and to learn more about their roles and responsibilities. But social workers, she says, do worry about the impact the change will have on them. “On a personal level it’s ‘where am I going to be based, who am I going to be sitting next to?’” says Van Den Hout.
Despite these concerns she is confident that those on the front line will be ready and able to deliver the new form of services: “Social work is nothing if it’s not about managing and enabling change.”
Members of the Cambridgeshire Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership:
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