by Bronagh MiskellyDisappointment for some, a realistic appraisal for others - Lord Laming's report, The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report will have had a mixed reaction.
The disappointed will number those who, judging by the headlines before the release, having had the witch-hunt were looking for a full-on burning at the stake.
To those with knowledge of or an interest in the nitty-gritty of child protection will be more interested in the detail of the measured but wide-ranging recommendations.
Unsurprisingly Lord Laming did not indulge in any self-flagellation over whether he might have got it wrong the first time but instead concentrated on plugging the gaps in the reformed system. That some of these holes should have been seen earlier or have been pointed out many times in the last few years may be seen as a tacit admission of failings but this is a report very much about moving forward with the Every Child Matters project. It is also about ensuring rigour and standards across every child services department.
Among the recommendations is much about proper training and experience not just for frontline staff but for senior management and Ofsted inspectors. Heads of children's services without a background in child protection will be expected to undergo training and to appoint a senior manager with the relevant experience to work with them. Ofsted inspectors reviewing child protection departments or cases must have direct experience of child protection work.
Serious case reviews come under detailed scrutiny with Lord Laming coming down quite close to what Community Care has called for in some areas. He wants independent chairs of Local Safeguarding Children's Boards and independent authors of SCRs. He also wants a more standardised approach and proper dissemination of learning. And while he rejected the full publication of SCRs he had called for the executive summaries to fully reflect the reports as a whole. This move to an independent, more standardised approach must be welcomed because it can only improve child safety by better sharing learning.
All this is welcome but as we all know the devil is in the implementation and no more so than with regard to Laming's recommendations to reduce caseloads, and improve recruitment and retention.
As he himself recognises: "Public vilification of social workers has a negative effect on staff and has serious implications for the effectiveness, status and morale of the children's workforce as a whole. There has been a long-term appetite in the media to portray social workers in ways that are negative and undermining."
He also refers to social work as the Cinderella service, as has Ed balls and others over the last few days. It will take a lot of work to institute these recommendations, might I humbly suggest that the government takes on the role of Prince Charming to actively push them forward and devote a lot of time to wooing the best and the brightest into child protection.
The analogy between the Cinderella service and Prince Charming saving the profession is not without its uses.
Social work is a profession staffed in its majority (like vast majority) by women. However in a rather paternalistic fashion we had these characters (Prince Laming, Prince Ball, etc...) who are not social workers and have no experience of front line work telling us how to get our house in order. Ed Balls went as far as saying that we needed to attract the brightest brains (males brains?) into the profession to make it more effective.
I wonder what GPs or teachers would make of advice given by people who do not belong to their profession.
I want to hear from senior (as in older) experienced (as in decades of experience) front line workers who are still interfacing with the public - THEY know what works!!
I am afraid in this case I am with Cathy Ashley from the Family Rights Group - Policies help but the greater change is brought about when the time is allowed for relationships to develop and careful assessments to be made. And for God's sake protect our admin support workers - we'll go mad without them.
Please see my email to my local MP dated 22 November 2008 which she forwarded to Ed Balls on 15 December 2008 and sent him a reminder about his non-reply on 9 February 2009!
Dear Janet Dean, MP
It was utterly predictable that there would be another high profile tragedy. Social Care seems impotent to fight back against the ever-increasing obsession with computers and paperwork - the former was supposed to reduce the latter! - what a joke. The time that social workers can actually spend in direct contact with children and families is probably less than 2 days a week - the rest is spent in front of computer screens completing endless Forms which are neither worker not user-friendly and whose value has to be questioned in their current formats.
The Child Protection 'bible' is 'Working Together to Safeguard Children' but it is a 256 - yes, 256 page document - hardly user-friendly and yet can be used against social workers (and other professionals) if they have not followed it. Following the death of Victoria Climbie on Tuesday 28 January 2003 the then Secretary of State, Alan Milburn, in a Statement to the House of Commons said as follows:
'Within the next 3 months I intend to secure the replacement of existing local guidance with new, shorter, clearer guidance which will reach everyone of the 1 million professional staff dealing with the safeguarding of Children. I also intend to simplify the wider range of Children Act guidance. It currently runs to 1,500 pages. It covers 15 volumes. Some of it is out of date. Our intention is to reduce it by 90%. To make it available in a single volume and to update it on a regular basis.
Where is this shorter, clearer Guidance?
We must heed the concerns expressed around ICS (Integrated Children's System) and the PLO (Public Law Outline) . The immense pressures to 'write it up' are, quite rightly identified, as detracting from the exercise of social workers professional judgements.
Why was the PLO trialled but introduced nationally prior to its evaluation?
As a social worker of 36 years experience it is that very experience that I draw on - you can not 'buy' that experience and we need to have in place good mentoring schemes whereby the more experienced of us can pass on those precious skills.
We must nor prioritise Performance Indicators (PI's) at the expense of quality / effectiveness / safety of the work being carried out is tragic. Assessments may well be carried out on time but who is ensuring their high quality?
The burden of legislation also needs to be compressed / unified into a simpler format for workers.
It is a tragedy that we lose so many highly-skilled and experienced staff into management - we need career-grade social workers who can earn the equivalent of what managers earn. We need to re-look at the medical model which we have for too long rubbished - that would retain highly skilled practitioners in practice.
We especially need to go back to a more neighbourhood / locality-based system of working. We need to go back to direct-access Family Centres. We need neighbourhood workers - where have they all gone? We need Hospital Paediatric social workers based within hospitals - and where have they all gone? We need Health Visitors who have more time to make home visits and 'chase up' non clinic / GP / hospital attendances and have sufficient time to spend with mums and dads who they have concerns about.
We need to concentrate long and hard on areas of multi deprivation and ensure that we have joined-up services which are easily and conveniently accessible to local residents,
Social care needs to re-connect with the very society we are there to serve and win their trust and confidence. The only way to do that is for Government to ease the 'shackles' of unnecessary bureaucracy.
Yours sincerely,
Philip J Measures,
Registered Social Worker
This 2nd. Laming Report does little to address the 'baby P' shortcomings - in many ways it is a sad response to the loss of his young life. There IS blame to be attached to those Councils who failed to implement Laming's first Report recommendations. There IS blame to be attached to Central Government and local Councils for proceeding with the Integrated Children's System (ICS) when elements of it are unsafe and even dangerous, there IS blame to be attached to unsafe computer databases which do not 'talk' to each other, there IS blame to be attached for poor Supervision - that is a clear managerial responsibility and senior managers ought to have been satisfying themselves that it was occurring to a high enough level, there IS blame to be attached where meeting Performance Indicators (PI's) has overtaken ensuring their quality and there IS blame to be attached to making it so difficult for social workers to speak out in order not to put their jobs at risk - too many would be seen as trouble-makers rather than being genuinely and passionately concerned to make things better.
I could say much more and I grieve to see the social work profession at such a low ebb but I honestly do not feel that Laming has addressed the right issues.
As a qualified and registered social worker with 40 years experience, I would like to confirm that I agree with every word of Philip Measures letter.
I am a recently retired Team Manager. I had originally intended to continue to work in the public service until the age of 65, until I reached a eureka moment! i.e. realised that I did not have to continue to work for a service, where the demands of PIs and ICS etc. were paramount.
I remain a committed and idealistic social worker, who loves my job! Now that I am working freelance, I am able to engage in direct one to one work with children and young people. My wealth of experience has equipped me with excellent active listening and assessment skills. Children and young people find themselves wanting to engage with me. In recent months I have gained much satisfaction when brief intervention has assisted children and young people to turn their lives around.
Thanks for your comments, Helen. The problem seems to be that very few of us have the passion / commitment / foolishness!!! to go public and try to make things better. That may all be to do with people not wanting to prejudice their careers and having little or no confidence in being able to speak out.
The comments on www.communitycare.co.uk in their CareSpace forum are really useful but, again, from only a few contributors, still, from small acorns etc!!!
Philip.measures@gmail.com
Actually when I started out in Social work 30 years ago in Hertfordshire, my Director of Social Services was Laming himself so he had done his social work apprenticeship! He was well thought of too!