http://www.ft.com/content/94184d66-517b-4893-8e06efd135b3

See Keeping the Powder Dry ~ a story of the £4tn spend just waiting to happen, and which general practice will find ways to spend ~ be aware of your patient codings as what you say will be captured by a LLM and used to generate the digital pull towards charging as ROI

https://www.ft.com/content/cb161f56-de60-4a4d-bdf9-b0b3e0e62174

Bradford Council Children Services Scrutiny Board is demanding greater scrutiny of the providers and their costings ~ why they don’t already know beggars belief ~ s114 Officers are required by law to take personal responsibility for the decisions made. I know that in 2007 they were gobsmacked, as were their counterparts the s151 Officers, by how spend decisions were actually made.

The CMA has said that the industry has been sleep walking into this mess. For sure, it’s all easily politised, and for sure, one could check out the political lineage of each Council’s spending decisions but unlike the s114 Officers the decisions made, and signed-off by registered social worker’s and their senior managers, don’t carry the onus placed on their colleagues the beleaguered s114 Officers ~ what are the ethical issues here?

I was surprised to read, in the Telegraph and Argos, that it’s the Conservative Group for Bradford Council and not the Labour Group who are arguing for an invest to save Children’s Strategy suggesting that a £400,000 capital spend developing local facilities is an option.

The narratives for social work are usually, and today wholly, created outside any connection with the local ~ is, I wondered, the propensity for generalised assumptions about professional worth and who’s getting the next training contract award, now, ‘a product’ of sleep walking too?

Agree, Shaun. Although, the trajectory is the reverse of this – check out Camilla Cavendish’s coverage of the issues in the FT ~ she’s a talented journalist and avid children’s campaigner.

That her coverage of the issues in the FT was all but in name an Initial Public Offering sets the tone of the real flexibility tobe afforded in the just announced Procurement Act 2023.

Buutzorg, is the latest thing in developing TEAL services right across ALL services ~ maybe the advantageous of trauma informed approaches for both children and adults will tend towards joint Local Authority collaboration within the new ICB area’s?

btw I spent years working in adult mental health, then drugs and alcohol before children and families, with a stop-off, in Youth Justice on the way. My time spent in the high security psychiatric estate prompting the shift towards child protection and family support.

Stay with it, Shaun. Our society is in a major and massive transition, post Brexit being only one factor. Councils, in my view, must now reestablish themselves as Local Authorities in a very literal way ~ Social Work is, as intended, pivotal to that this.

Thanks Alex. You have a far more sophisticated understanding of this area than I do. My recurrent concern as a Mental Health SW who was worked lots of adults and a few children, is the costs paid to unregulated providers, whether adults or children. More so children as they were approaching 18 years old who, where needs had been complex, or perhaps more accurately emotionally evocative to those involved…often with a vagueness to the provision other than “managing risk”.For a long time I have felt local authorities commissioning high quality directly provided provision was the way to set the market. Yes not cheap, but if we are part of the market, LAs can then at least set the costs more robustly in the “market”. I fail to see the current systems working that well for children nor adults.

This is a long-run issue. There are many perverse incentives at work which drive OAP’s, and what amounts to insider-dealing is just one.

If, as is claimed , market rules were to be applied properly ~ they aren’t ~ the primacy of children’s rights would have been weighed and reviewed by the Competition and Mergers Authority; the statutory entitlement and protections afforded children are impacted, and more directly than is comfortable, by the Unfair Terms and Conditions of Contract Law.

The cart is before the horse. Buisness interests and ROI before the child. Having hinted at a market response, risk escalation has become the besy way to make claims for higher-costs ~ it’s a sewn-in and systemic problem.

Open book approaches, while a great Idea, are outside the scope of any Authority enforcement ie it’s not permitted in Competition Law. More worrying though is the collusion between professionals, including advocates, to rig the Children’s Reviews to further the business interests of Providers interests ~ I was a s16 IRO and was often just simply gobsmacked at the ‘failing placement’ aggrogance used for claiming higher-costs ‘or else’ highground ~ and shocked by the inducements made to the children to behave a certain way at or in anticipation for the Review.

It’s a ‘buyer beware’ market. Once an Authority commits is serious hard to get-out.

The Child simply gets lost.

There’s now sufficient intelligence, and from those with commerce interests, for Council’s to finally make up their minds about OAPs.

The s114 Officers have, and not before time, called time.

Council’s, though, must also demonstrate that they aren’t simply using children for their own political purpose, as legitimate as it maybe ~ if s114 Officers have known about this problem for an age then the Council as a whole as too. Where, and it’s a huge democratic deficit if so, they have not been involved questions must be asked about this too.

‘Out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ services are the basis for market entry, rivalry and collusion, is this good enough?

*In 2007 I was 1of3 people looking specifically at contracting and procurement of Children’s services. And, while asked to do so by the Authorities had to resort to the FOIA to anywhere near the information. Staff both social work and contract officer too scared to talk ~ those who did quickly reminded of the consequence of whistle blowing ~ it’s rough terrain*