The National Audit Office Report into the demise of the charity Kids Company makes for sombre reading.
The report paints the picture of an organisation that was good at
persuading people (especially ministers) to fund it, but which lacked
leadership, focus and control when it came to actually providing services.
I have to say that it has made me reflect, because my first reaction to the charity's closure was to suspect that it had become too outspoken, not too disorganised.
http://chrismillsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/he-who-pays-piper-calls-tune.html
But now it is clear what has happened, and why, it is also clear that the moral of this unhappy saga for the future of child
protection services is not being trumpeted loudly enough. Let me explain why.
Camila
Batmanghelidjh, the former chief executive of Kids Company, is reported to have
been an advocate of outsourcing child protection work from local authorities to
the voluntary sector. Ministers, of course, are at this very moment working on
such plans, albeit involving some private sector involvement as well. The charity's demise is clear evidence just how dangerous such a strategy is.
The biggest obstacle to getting third party providers to deliver
complex services to children and families, to meet complex needs, is that
complex services are notoriously difficult to specify; and contracts to supply them are
notoriously difficult to monitor and enforce. Add to this potent mix the fact
that child protection services are safety
critical and the potential for serious, and possibly tragic, service
failures has to be recognised as being very high indeed. In short, in the wake
of the Kids Company collapse, ministers need to recognise the real dangers to
services, and to service users, of an arms-length outsourcing approach.
Armed with the lessons of recent history, and informed by
this National Audit Office Report, ministers would indeed be reckless to
proceed with further outsourcing of children’s services without a great deal of
further thought and reflection. From the standpoint of their political careers,
and the best interests of children and young people, they would do best to quietly
drop the whole outsourcing strategy and to concentrate on less risky and
better-evidenced approaches to improvement.
And the Prime Minister himself, who was a fan of Kids Company, would do well to reflect on the errors of judgement implicit in continuing to fund the charity when there appeared to be ample evidence that something was amiss. In particular he needs to recognise the implications for the whole outsourcing debate.
