Children’s services in Worcestershire have returned to council control after being run by a trust for five years.
Worcestershire Children First (WCF) is being wound up with its former staff having been transferred to Worcestershire County Council, which is now back in charge of children’s services in the area, as of 1 October 2024.
The move leaves 11 local authority children’s services in the hands of not-for-profit companies, either after having been transferred voluntarily by the local authority or because the Department for Education (DfE) has mandated outsourcing due to poor performance.
DfE direction for council to lose control of services
The DfE determined that Worcestershire should lose control of its children’s services in 2017, on the recommendation of a DfE-appointed commissioner, and following an inadequate Ofsted rating earlier that year.
The following year, the DfE approved the council’s business case to set up a company it wholly owned to run services and, in 2019, WCF was established, with a five-year contract to deliver social care, early help and education.
Prior to the transfer, Ofsted reinspected the council in 2019, leading to a requires improvement rating, which WCF has since improved further, earning a good grade last year.
Financially-driven decision
In a report to the council’s cabinet in January, council leaders justified the decision to take back control of services on financial grounds and due to the benefits of reintegrating children’s services into the wider authority.
While the company – whose gross expenditure budget was forecast to be £148.4m in 2023-24 – made small surpluses in its first three years, it overspent by £7.6m in 2022-23 and had been forecast to do so by £28.6m in 2023-24, mainly due to national cost pressures on care placements.
The council said it could save about £200,000 a year from winding up the company, which would remove the need for the post of director of resources at WCF as well as those of chair and non-executive directors on the company board.
Existing team structures maintained
Team structures and reporting lines have been maintained for the majority of former WCF staff, including those working in safeguarding, early help, education, early years and inclusion and all-age disability services, according to a council paper published in July.
These teams have formed a new children’s services directorate within the county council, it added.
A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said: “We’re pleased to report that the transfer of children’s services went smoothly with no interruption to services. The cost of the transfer has been confirmed as £83,000 and will deliver recurrent savings of an estimated £200,000 each year.”
DfE seeking ‘more cost-effective alternative to trusts’
The move comes with a DfE project looking to develop a “more cost-effective” alternative to children’s trusts for struggling services.
The project is also aiming to draw up a response plan for the possibility of any existing children’s trust failing financially.
Since 2020, just one trust has been created, in Bradford, while Doncaster took its services back in-house in 2022.
A turning away from the trust model
Since 2020, trusts and ADMs have been considered in other areas subject to statutory directions due to poor performance, but eventually rejected on the advice of DfE-appointed commissioners.
In two of these areas – Medway and West Sussex – the authority made significant improvements, with the former earning a good rating and the latter a requires improvement grade, with good features, from Ofsted last year.
In other cases, such as Herefordshire, North East Lincolnshire, Solihull and Sefton, commissioners rejected a trust on the grounds of the potential disruption to improvement of transferring services to a new body, and the delay to progress that would result from creating such an organisation.
Instead, they have tended to recommend that the authority be supported to improve by a high-performing council, such as those listed as sector-led improvement partners by the DfE.
The same was true of a highly critical report on Tameside council by its commissioner, Andy Couldrick, published last month.
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I hope this happens in my local authority
Children’s Services should absolutely be under local authority management for the best hope of integrity for children and their families.
Correct me if I am wrong but the argument for the creation of trusts was because of the inadequacy of local authority management in respect of children/families. Sadly this continues. Trusts have fared no better
The whole profession is in absolute crisis, and is generally not fit for purpose, nor is giving children and families what they need and deserve, which is an appropriate level of support and protection. This is right across the country, but the children in the poorest, and most deprived areas, will be affected the most. To many in senior management on big salaries who never venture out of their walls to engage with the children and families, and not enough actual workers on the ground, who are paid a pittance, when all of the unpaid excessive over-time hours is taken into account. Same old story, will continue.