Social services must embrace major change if it is to remain part of the mainstream of social care in Britain, argues Ray Jones.

As the social policy of this government rapidly evolves, it is vital that social services seize the opportunity to become part of the mainstream of policy development. Indeed, there is now hope of repairing the damage caused by the increase in organisational fragmentation and complexity during the past two decades.

For example, in the health service the complicated, almost incomprehensible structures that have developed with GP fundholding, health trusts and health authorities have led to confusion about accountability and responsibility. There has been a similar experience in education, with grant maintained schools, locally managed schools and education authorities.

In looking towards a new integrated framework for planning and delivering services, several local authorities have already set up committee and management structures giving greater strategic coherence to services. This includes, for example, the establishment of joint social services and housing departments, children's committees and policy directorates. Even at the Local Government Association, social services issues are considered by a health and social affairs committee, rather than a social services committee.

However, it also ought to be recognised that central government is not primarily committed to local government but is looking to promote local democracy. It is questioning and challenging local government committee structures and processes and local government's departmentalism.

At some stage, the Labour government is also likely to want to address the chaos of council structures, following the disjointed progress of local government reform. This is likely to be further motivated by the development of regional government and by Labour's ambition to have more control nationally over social policy strategies and the allocation of resources.

What is important for social services is to recognise the trends that the government is keen to promote. It will be crucial to make sure the skills, expertise and perspectives of social services are integrated into the agencies that are likely to develop to deliver the government's agenda.

One possible model for an integrated health and social care service would combine elements of the government's national strategy with the local sensitivity necessary for its implementation. The driving force for the delivery of services would be the development of combined primary care and community care trusts.

For children and families services it is also possible to look towards the development of new integrated local authority education and children's services departments. This recognises that, with increased devolution of power to individual schools, it is special education that is a major day-to-day management and operational concern of education departments. This responsibility links very closely with many of the child care responsibilities of social services departments.

We can also imagine a future where secondary schools, with their local catchment of primary schools, cluster together into management groups that can assist them in managing the devolved budgets and the provision - or purchasing - of central support services.

This could develop along similar lines to primary care and community care trusts in the health service, with local education and children's services being based around a management grouping of schools that have devolved budgets. Decentralised children and families services could be located in this management cluster, recognising that schools could become major local community resource centres.

Greater integration of health and social care services, and potentially of education and children's services, presents real opportunities. It is important that social services engage in discussion about these opportunities, as failure to do so is likely to lead to the increasing marginalisation of social services and a future that is shaped by the other players. We must not allow social services to be treated as an afterthought: it should be central to the development of new service models. The future can be bright - but the future may not be the continuation of separate social services departments.

There are plenty of signs already of the potential marginalisation of social services. Having successfully tackled, on behalf of the government, the difficult task of capping escalating residential and nursing home expenditure - which increased from £10 million in 1982 to £2.4 billion in 1992 - many social services departments are now experiencing reductions in funding in real-terms, despite the increasing need and demand for services. The result is greater rationing of services.

Indeed, when the government does make relatively small sums of additional funding available for social services this is often through bids which have to be made to local health services - winter pressure funding and mental health challenge funding are prime examples. This would seem to reflect the government's concern that, if it funds local authorities directly, it will not be able to control and shape their priorities.

The NHS might be seen as undemocratic at a local level, but local authorities are viewed as lacking a national strategic and priority-setting structure.

By contrast with social services departments, the health service and education authorities are getting real-terms increases in their budgets. This suggests the future shape of national, and indeed local, political priorities. This is borne out by the fact that these are the agencies that are increasingly given responsibility for the strategic development of services - for example, through the wide-ranging health improvement plans of the health service and the early years initiative in education authorities.

Furthermore, social services are penalised for providing services directly. The new Labour government has made it even more difficult for local authorities to provide residential care. It has further restricted the availability of capital finance for social services and has amended the standard spending assessment funding formula so that those authorities that transfer homes out of their direct control no longer have to suffer a reduction in their standard spending assessment.

Add to this the equal opportunity challenges being mounted by trade unions, which are leading to higher costs for local authority services, and relate this to the government's drive towards Best Value, and it is not difficult to see departments moving hurriedly away from direct provision of residential care and potentially home care.

Social services developed around the core professional discipline of social work. The social work training council CCETSW, with its funding and accountability linked to the Department of Health, is soon to be replaced by a national training organisation for social care, responsible to and potentially funded by the Department for Education and Employment.

Also on the cards is the General Social Care Council to regulate standards and employment within social care - including the private and voluntary sectors - and this will have a much broader remit than social work. A further reform is that probation officers will no longer be trained as social workers, while the move towards the appointment of care managers in many authorities also reflects a reshaping - though not a loss - of the skills and perspectives of social workers themselves. These alterations to the role of social work may be an increasing trend.

It should also be noted that the government's emphasis on dealing with social exclusion has not given a high profile to social services. The social exclusion agenda has been linked with education: tackling school non-attendance, illiteracy and numeracy are key goals. It also includes promoting better health - with the recent government Green Paper linking health promotion with changes in lifestyle, environmental issues and tackling poverty - and policies to tackle unemployment, homelessness, community safety and crime. These policies, quite rightly, have a much broader remit than social services. Indeed social services may be seen as only a relatively minor player in all of this.

All of the above may seem rather pessimistic. However, it is also possible to be optimistic and to grab all the opportunities there are, before the points of view, expertise and commitment found in social services are devalued and lost. These strengths are more likely to be preserved by going with the flow of social policy and integrating into new organisations which serve the government's agenda.

More than 25 years after the birth of social services and 50 years after the advent of the welfare state it is time for a rethink.

Indeed it is more than timely. If we fail to take stock, social services may well have to endure the trauma of gradually withering into a residual, stigmatising and increasingly underfunded welfare agency. It will become marginalised and struggle to assist those who are marginalised in our communities. Instead, there is now the chance to evolve a new approach, but this requires that we do not just seek to defend current vested interests and empires. Thriving in the future demands a willingness to engage positively in shaping that future.

Ray Jones is social services director, Wiltshire Council.