Amid concerns that children's services money is being sucked
into protection work, MPs have revived calls for greater investment
in long-term family support, writes Josephine
Hocking
A preoccupation with child protection is distracting children's
services departments from preventive family support work, according
to
a new report by MPs.
Family support services should be "universally available at
agreed minimum levels", says the children, schools and families
select committee's report, published last month. The MPs are
worried about how councils with large care populationscan afford to
commit resources to family support.
But, at a time of public sector cuts - not to mention heightened
government and public concern over child protection since the Baby
P case - how likely is a plea for more preventive work to be
King's College, says the framing of legislation dictates how the
care system operates and how councils set priorities. She told the
select committee that, since the Children Act 1989, local
authorities had placed more emphasis on safeguarding than promoting
welfare.
In terms of family support, the figures for council spending
reveal that the ratio of spending on family support services
compared with spending on looked-after children ranges from 1:2 in
some authorities to 1:10 in others.
Fewer children
in care
Aworking group set up after the publication of the government's
Care Matters: Time for Change to investigate the care
population found that councils with fewer children in care -
including Merton, Kent, Kirklees, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets -
tend to invest more in family support. The reverse also tends to be
true: councils with lower family support spends often have higher
care populations.
Hackney Council in London says it has made sustained investment
in family support servicesin order to reduce its care population.
There are now 330 children lookedafter by Hackney, compared with
470 three years ago. Steve Goodman, Hackney's deputy director of
children and young people's services, says there is "much anxiety"
about child protection in localand national government but says
Hackney is holding its nerve. He emphasises senior managers must
share risk with frontline social workers when making decisions.
"Children's services work is a risky area and the state cannot
guarantee that parents won't harm their children, but we can reduce
the risk," Goodman says. He told the select committee that bad
social work training and bureaucracy in children's social care led
to poor, risk-averse practice.
Long term
commitment
The care population in the London borough of Merton isone of the
lowest in England.
Merton's Phoenix project, run with charity Action for Children,
provides intensive support for families and aims to prevent
teenagers going into care.
Helen Lincoln, head of children's social care at Merton Council,
says: "We have a long-term commitment to strong family support, but
there will always be children who need to be in the care system. We
must be sure we make the right decisions on which children stay
with their families.
"Our approach has been tested in the current climate of anxiety
about child protection," she says.
Despite this, Lincoln is confident that Merton's family support
work is robust. She believes its success is down to good
multi-agency working, early intervention, evidence-based services,
and a focused, tenacious approach to work with serviceusers.
No universal
service
But despite being praised by the committee, the family support
work provided by Merton's Phoenix project is still a long way from
the universal service the MPs want to see: a "national consensus on
the rationale behind decision-making about entry to and exit from
care". Lincoln acknowledges that Phoenix works with teenagers on
the "cusp of care", and that the threshold for families to access
service is "near crisis".
Colin Green, safeguarding lead for the Association of Directors
of Children's Services, told the select committee more
interventions were needed, with more services "in the bit in the
middle between [universal services such as schools and children's
centres] and the very high-threshold services characterised
primarily as social care".
But Mary MacLeod, chief executive at the National Family and
Parenting Institute, believes early intervention often remains an
aspiration rather than a reality. "Many are struggling to keep
services at current levels in the recession and are a long way from
lowering thresholds for services," she adds.
Accessing
support
MacLeod's views seem to chime with the experiences of parents,
who argue that receiving the support they need is not always easy.
Responding to a survey by the children's rights director for
England, 59 per cent of almost 200 parents of looked-after children
across 58 councils said they received no support to help prevent
their children going into care. Parents want more support earlier,
and closer working relationships with councils, as well as more
assessment before care decisions are made.
Before any universal service with agreed minimum levels can ever
be delivered, we must first be sure what actually works in family
support. The care population working groupcalled for more research
into what works, and for a more planned approach to the delivery of
family support services.
MacLeod says minimum levels are very difficult to set because
the needs of families are so diverse. "Families go in and out of
difficulties as circumstances change, so how would minimum levels
work?" she asks.
Hard-to-reach
families
She believes health visitors are part of the answer,
particularly in terms of reaching hard-to-reach families. "It's a
universal service, so there's no stigma," she explains. "Health
visitors are already linking with social care, referring cases of
domestic violence and children at risk. This should be developed
further."
Tunstill agrees that it will be "very complicated" to define
what minimum levels of family support would be. She is also
concerned that such a scheme could lead to some councils only ever
doing the minimum, claiming to have done their duty by sticking to
basic levels.
The call by MPs for more family support services is not new. A
social services select committee made exactly the same point in
1984 but the recommendation was not implemented - due to a social
services preoccupation with child protection.
Will it ever be the right time for early intervention? Tunstill
believes a public education campaign about the realities of
children's social work may help and is long overdue. "It is easy
(and rightly so) for the public to get angry about Baby P," she
says. "But people in this country don't get upset about poverty and
inequality and the complexity of family problems.
"There is a lack of political will when allocating budgets to
pledge money for family support. The work is long-term, it is not
dramatic. It is unsexy, but it is crucial."
Tunstill is right that attitudes must change if early
intervention and more family support are to become the norm. Let's
hope a committee of MPs isn't still calling for more family support
services 25 years from now.
Further information
Select committee report on looked after children. (April
2009):
Report from Care Matters working group on care population:
(June 2007):
Hackney's Reclaim
Social Work initiative:
Care Matters working groups' discussions: