Outsourcing children's services can work, if done voluntarily

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/20/outsourcing-childrens-services-voluntarily-councils

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The Department for Education (DfE) is consulting on allowing councils to outsource a range of children's social care functions. It sees this as helping to support councils to improve services. It suggests that councils have been frustrated in their attempts to introduce innovative approaches to social care by the existence of complex and outdated regulation.

How should those of us working in children's services respond? Is it the thin edge of a large privatisation wedge or a removal of over-prescriptive central government regulation?

For me, a key question is whether the statutory obligation on a council is removed if it chooses to delegate delivery of some social care services to another agency. This is important because too often engagement with an external agency is seen as being the consequence of a council failing in one or more statutory duties – by willingly choosing to delegate a service is this stigma removed? Clearly, some councils are keen to outsource some of their social care services, among them Staffordshire and the London boroughs of Kingston and Richmond.

External agencies, including private firms and voluntary and community organisations, are already heavily involved in providing child protection and other social care services for children. These include agency and permanent social workers, foster parents, residential placement, assessment centres, and IT and other support services. One question we need to ask is: "Are there some services that we should not, under any circumstances, allow a local authority to deliver through another body?"

Inevitably, much attention has focused on the councils found to be failing, where the DfE has intervened. In some cases, the answer has been to create new arrangements to take responsibility for children's social care, such as the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Partnership or the council-proposed, and DfE-supported, Doncaster Children's Trust. Some areas are considering setting up trusts for social care. Removing unnecessary barriers may help them.

One of the greatest challenges facing councils when improving services is finding the capacity. In my view, most skilled social work professionals work for councils. But not all. In both the voluntary and private sector, capacity exists. One way to make that available to councils may be to form partnership models of council, voluntary sector and private agencies. Key to these partnerships will be the central role the council plays, and their voluntary nature.