The general election campaign is hotting-up in Britain. On 7th May 2015 the British people will elect a new government. In the meantime the various parties are publishing their manifestos. Not to be out done I thought I should publish my own.
First of all here’s what will NOT be in my child protection manifesto:
There will be nothing about privatising child protection services. Privatisation is a complete
distraction that has enormous potential to be very disruptive. And there is
absolutely no evidence that it would make any positive difference. The
worst-case scenario that child protection could be handed over to companies and
organisations that have no previous experience and no demonstrable competence
is too dire to contemplate. So privatisation is definitively out.
There will also be nothing in my manifesto about mandatory reporting. I am in favour of
all professionals and other practitioners always reporting child abuse and
neglect (which is what it says in current guidance) but I am NOT in favour of
using the criminal law to punish people who make mistakes. And it goes without
saying that I am completely against jail sentences (like those proposed by the
Prime Minister) for social workers and teachers who get it wrong. The blame
culture actually makes children and young people less safe, because it makes
workers afraid to talk about – and therefore learn from – their mistakes.
And, unlike UKIP who published their manifesto yesterday,
there will definitely NOT be
anything in my manifesto about “wholesale
reform”. What we need is steady incremental progress, not some chaotic
reform designed by people who have no relevant experience or expertise and lots of untested
opinions.
Enough of the negatives, here’s what will be in my manifesto:
The pervasive theme of my manifesto is that of a learning culture. That is a culture
in which a premium is placed on understanding why things go wrong and
progressively changing practices and organisations to try to reduce the
probability of things going wrong again. It wouldn’t be a ‘no-blame culture’
(because professionals and other practitioners who engage in deliberate
wrongdoing should face the consequences) but it would be a ‘just culture’ – one in which people who make honest mistakes are
not blamed and individuals are never scapegoated because of organisational
failings. It would be a ‘reporting
culture’ – one in which people were respected and rewarded for talking
openly about human error and learning from mistakes to make their organisations
safer.
Cultures like that are not brought about by legislation, but
government could provide a national lead. It could set the tone and model the
appropriate behaviour in how it responded when things went wrong. Not caving in
to the ranting of the popular press every time there is a tragedy would be a
good start.
The next item in my manifesto might not seem at first sight
to be closely related to the last, but it is. I would take away from Ofsted responsibility for child protection and
children’s services inspections. In my view Ofsted is very much part of a
name-and-shame culture. It has NOT contributed to learning how to do things
better – it just says: “This is wrong, put it right”. The methodology of its
inspections is suspect and it has never satisfactorily addressed allegations of
lack of independence, stemming from the re-writing of inspection reports
following the Baby Peter tragedy. Ofsted seems to have little corporate
knowledge of child protection, or organisational safety, or good management
practice. Its inspections are judgmental and often process focused. Even its
attempts to engage with children and young people and other service users are
tokenistic. In short it is not fit for purpose. In its place I would create an
organisation that researched child protection, investigated when things went
wrong and carried out inspections that focused on improvement, not on putting
organisations in a ‘sin-bin’.
I would abolish
Serious Case Reviews. They are resource hungry, time-consuming, slow to
report and they mostly provide only a very partial picture of what has gone wrong.
They seldom address the question ‘why’ and as a consequence they seldom make
sensible suggestions for improvement. Instead I would task the organisation
with which I would replace Ofsted to carry out investigations into child protection disasters, much in the same
way as the Air Accident Investigation Branch carries out enquiries into civil
air crashes.
I would establish a
national funding formula for child protection that made it very difficult
to under-fund services. Central government should commit to an open and
transparent arrangement, so that everybody concerned should be able to see how
much is being spent by whom on what.
I would make the provision
of therapeutic services (such as mental health) to children and young people who have been
abused and neglected a part of that formula. It is just not acceptable that those who have suffered should be left without appropriate support.
I would consult on returning
central government responsibility for child protection and children’s social
care to the Department of Health. Located where it is, in the Department
for Education, it sticks out like a sore thumb. I would like to see much closer
working together between local authority children’s services, community health
services for children and families, paediatric services, accident and emergency
services and child and adolescent mental health services. That could most easily be led
from the Department of Health.
Talking of community health services for children and
families, I would allocate sufficient resources to see a full return to a fully staffed Health Visitor service.
It is a disgrace that numbers of Health Visitors were allowed to decline and
have not yet been fully restored, when what we need are more than ever because
of changing demographics.
For a long time I have been unhappy with the way in which
local government has brought to child protection and children’s services those
regrettable aspects of local government culture with which we are all
familiar: bureaucracy, procedures,
hierarchies, targets, some aspects of local politics – I could go on. As I have
already said I’m not a great advocate of disruptive change, so I wouldn’t want
to do anything too dramatic too quickly, but I think it is time to consider ways in which the professional
ethos of children’s services could be better preserved within the existing
local authority framework. Perhaps some semi-autonomous organisation within
the local authority, but involving input particularly from health professionals
would be a good idea. I would also like to see much greater use of
multi-disciplinary teams and inter-agency working. The multi-agency
safeguarding hubs (MASH) are proving to be a quiet success, so the model of
professionals from different agencies working in single teams could be
broadened to include other parts of the service. Having a clinical psychologist
on hand as part of the team or a paediatrician specifically tasked to support
and train social workers and other professionals would be a great resource.
In terms of capital spending I think something sensible needs to be done about IT for child protection. Supportive
IT is what is required, something that makes the job easier and quicker and
makes records more accurate, accessible and reliable. We need something that
reduces the amount of administration and frees-up professionals to work face to
face more often with children and families. We need something that reduces
stress, not increases it. We need new fresh thinking.
My final thoughts concern training. I think all different
kinds of professionals engaged in child protection, no matter what their area
of expertise, should undertake training
in how to work more safely. The kind of training I have in mind is often
referred to as Human Factors. It is
non-technical training that teaches people to understand how they make errors
at work and gives them some basic skills in avoiding or mitigating errors in
the workplace. It isn’t very expensive. Government could and should fund it.
