BIRMINGHAM'S CHILDRENS SERVICES - TRUSTIFICATION IS WORTH A TRY, BUT....

Birmingham's Childrens Services have been struggling big time for well over the past 20 years, thereby proving itself resistant to making the desired improvements, despite many changes having been made. Now, it is not unusual for local authorities to be struggling, indeed, it has come to be expected that, as central government increases its expectations and demands of these authorities in safeguarding children, without adequately increasing the funding of them, so they have increasingly found themselves floundering in the sharp infested waters of children's services.

Local authorities childrens and adults services are expected to perform miracles. In effect, they are, like Christ, expected to perform the economic or funding equivalent of 'five fish and 2 loaves' miracle, by  providing adequate services for children and vulnerable adults, with decreasing resources. The government wants local authorities to provide more value for less input of resources, including less social workers. It speaks of the 'team around the child', with a view to emphasisng the focusing on preventative social services, hoping to identify and address potential needs or problems before they become more pronounced.

Being confronted with the dragon of central government and the constantly increasing qualitative and quantitative demands on their services, local authority social care services have become paralysed by their attempts to meet these irreconcilable pressure by means of applying the principle of 'constant reorganisation or reconfiguration of services.'  Something which has proved both ineffective, demoralising for staff, and wasteful of resources, including funding.  This process, which has been going on for at least 20 odd years, from the early 1990s, has seen local authorities changing their policies from having appropriate residential services for children in care, to making them a last resort and focusing on foster care and adoption options. 

One adverse consequences of this has been that, when they have to meet the needs of with children who, not being able to get on with their own families or being rejected by them, prove too challenging for foster carers and need the emotionally less or 'non-threatening' regime of a supportive children's home, they then have to buy in such services from the independent sector; probably at a higher cost than the directly provided service they had in the past. 

This cycle of constant reorganisation and reconfiguration of children's services has resulted in many a children's services ending up in an impasse; no sooner have they made some progress in implementing a newly reconfigured service, the merits of which their staff are yet to be convinced, than it has to be replaced by a different model, due to new guidance or directives from central government, or change of the director. 

Such is the impact of organizational paralysis.

Consequently, local authority children and social care services have become hostages to the whims and dogmas of central government's.  In Britain, we have seen this happening from the days of Thatcherism, when the then Minister, Cecil Parkinson, sought to make parents responsible for their children's delinquent behaviour.  More recently, we have seen it, again, from a Tory Government, forging ahead with its policy to have more children adopted; at apparently whatever cost.

Of course I am aware that the provision of children's services and, more generally, social care services, cannot be political neutral. Yet, it does seem to be the case that governments formed by the Conservative Party tend to be of the view that local authorities' childrens services are generally being run and staffed by 'leftist and politically correct revolutionaries' who want to destroy the family unit; one of the very bedrock on which conservatism is founded.

There is clearly a need to have greater consensus amongst the main political parties about the model of social care system which Britain - and, indeed, European countries - should have, if costly and ineffective changes are to be avoided. An instance of such politically driven and economically unproven change was the Conservative Government's decision to discard the previous Labour Government's "Every Child Matters' social care principle, once it came into power, and instituted its own.

And this leads me to contemplating  what is it about Birmingham's Children's Services why it has persistently failed to improve, even over a 20 year period of time.  How can this be?  Clearly, it suggests some major institutional and structural problems within the directorate. It is the case that Birmingham has found it difficult to recruit staff in general, and that this difficulty could have impacted on the Service's ability to recruit staff with the appropriate expertise, skills and competence. 

Time for Birmingham's Childrens Services to get beyond the barrier of constant failings?!

This problem, in turn, would have affected the level of professional and emotional support which would be available to social care staff in general, and newly qualified and less experienced staff member, in particular. All of which would have impacted on the quality of social work practice being provided across the board, such as assessments, report preparation, provision of direct work with service users, meeting time-scales and performance indicators, etc. It is also likely that it would have led to social workers having too large caseloads which they cannot properly manage, and would lead to further stress and decreased their performance further.

Having probably tried most option, it is understandable that the government should now be taking over Birmingham's Childrens Services and making it into a Trust.  With apparently 9 out of 10 Hospital Trusts expecting to run into a deficit, there should not be any expectation that the newly Trustised Birmingham's Children's Services will prove to be an exception.  However, if it is able to come up with the right 'root and branch' remodelled  service, and provide the eligible citizens of Birmingham with a reasonable and sustainable standard of social care, then it will have worth the change.