Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie led to an overhaul of children’s services in the form of the Every Child Matters green paper published in 2003, and the Children Act 2004. These documents outlined a programme of reform across councils which is still being implemented.
The major change involved the dismantling of traditional social services and the merging of children’s social care with education and some health services, to form a children’s services department, and the merging of adults’ social care with some community health services.
The text below outlines key legislation, guidance and incidents which have shaped the reforms.
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Every Child Matters
The government published the Every Child Matters green paper in September 2003 in response to Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie published in January of that year. Victoria was murdered by her Aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's boyfriend Carl Manning in February 2000, aged eight. Victoria had 128 separate injuries on her body at the time of her death after months of abuse by the pair.
The Victoria Climbie inquiry exposed a lack of communication between professionals and 12 missed opportunities where Victoria’s death could have been prevented. It also showed problems with lines of accountability and the consequences of over loading frontline workers.
The Every Child Matters green paper covers England only. It aims to stop children from falling through the net and sets up preventive services to enable them to receive support before they reached crisis point.
It set out five outcomes it wanted children’s services to help children to achieve:
Measures set out in the green paper include:
National database
A database containing details of all children in England is set to be up and running by the end of 2008. It will only contain basic details and the contact details of other professionals working with the child and aims to improve information sharing. It will not contain any details about their actual cases.
In 2002 the government launched 11 information sharing and assessment trailblazers, covering 15 councils either working alone or in partnership, to trial running databases in local areas. In April 2007 these came to an end. The government has heralded the pilots a success but one trailblazer being run by Kensington and Chelsea Council permanently halted due to data protection concerns.
In April 2007 all councils were required to start setting up databases ready for them to join up to become one national index by the end of 2008. The index has now been renamed ContactPoint.
Common assessment framework
The common assessment framework aims to stop children from having to constantly give their details to each different set of professionals they come into contact with and goes across child services covering special educational needs, Connexions, youth offending teams, health and social services.
Lead professional
Under the lead professional initiative, children who are known to more than one agency will be allocated a single named professional who will take the lead on their case and be responsible for their package of care.
Multi-disciplinary teams
The idea of multi-disciplinary teams is to encourage professionals to work together in and around schools and children’s centres.
Director of children’s services and lead member for children
The government wanted there to be one person responsible for meeting children’s needs locally and so created the director of children’s services position, accountable for local authority education and children’s social care. All councils have to create this post by April 2008. The government also said they would legislate to create a lead council member for child services.
Children’s trusts
The director of children’s services will head a children's trust which will bring together children’s social care, education, some children’s health services and Connexions and can include other services such as youth offending teams. Although not legally required to create trusts, the government set out an inspection process which requires joint working and partnership only achievable in such an arrangement.
Initially there were 35 pathfinder trusts but the government said it expected all councils to have created a trust or an arrangement providing the same outcomes by April 2008.
Trusts feature co-located services, such as children’s centres or extended schools, and different types of professionals working in multi agency teams. The arrangement aims to bring about more joint working and for services to be based around the needs of the child. Joint commissioning and pooled budgets are also encouraged to help this to take place.
Children and young people’s plans
Every area was required to have a children and young people’s plan by April 2006. The plans form the basis for children’s trusts delivery of services.
Local safeguarding children boards
Local safeguarding children boards are the replacements for area child protection committees. Unlike ACPCs boards have a statutory footing and consist of representatives from council’s partner agencies including housing, health, police and probation services. They co-ordinate the partner agencies’ functions in relation to safeguarding and are usually chaired by the director of children’s services.
Children's commissioner
The Every Child Matters green paper outlined plans for the first ever children's commissioner for England, to act as an independent champion for children. The commissioner is required to report annually to parliament through the secretary of state.
In March 2005 Al Aynsley-Green (pictured left)was appointed to this position and still holds the post. Campaigners welcomed the role but many, such as the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, questioned the level of power attached to it.
This came after fierce rows in the House of Commons in the previous year when the then children’s minister Margaret Hodge won her battle to have five references to the word “rights” removed from the description of the role. She also altered the position from promoting and safeguarding the rights of children in England to promoting awareness of their views.
Children’s centres
Prior to Every Child Matters the government had already committed itself to creating Sure Start children’s centres in each of the 20 most deprived neighbourhoods. These combine nursery, education, family support, employment advice, childcare and health services on one site.
Since then it has announced plans for 3, 500 children’s centres in all parts of England.
Recent changes to legislation placing a duty to cooperate on schools
In November 2006 the government announced a surprise change to legislation which forces schools in England and Wales to promote children's wellbeing. The move, in the form of an amendment to the Education and Inspections Bill, came after intensive lobbying from campaigners to place such a duty on schools.
Integrated inspection regime for children’s services
An integrated inspection regime for children’s services was introduced by the Children Act 2004. This replaced inspections of individual services. Integrated inspections consist of an annual performance assessment, carried out by Ofsted and a joint area review which also involves Ofsted, together with agencies covering areas such as youth justice and health.
Joint area reviews began in September 2004 and are being carried out on a three year cycle with every local authority due to have been through one by 2008. These go beyond council services covering other areas such as health and the police. Up until this year they led to a single report on an area’s outcomes for children.
This has now changed and joint area reviews are now narrower and no longer provide on their own a grade for a council’s children’s services. Instead, all councils will have an annual performance assessment as well (previously if it was a joint area review year for a council the annual performance assessment would not take place), which is wider in its coverage than previously.
Annual performance assessments began in 2005. They produce a unified assessment of education and children’s social care which is used as the rating for the children and young people’s strand of the comprehensive performance assessment. The assessments also produce a separate children’s social care rating. This contributes to the children’s social care component of the overall social care star ratings.
Changes to the inspectorate
Up until recently the Commission for Social Care Inspection was responsible for inspected children’s social care services but in April 2007 its children’s functions were merged with Ofsted. The inspection services for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service were also merged into the schools watchdog.
Denise Platt, chair of the CSCI has raised concerns that children’s social care may be marginalised in the new body. She has also called for youth justice and community health services for children included in a unified children’s inspectorate.
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