Will, say, the Children’s Act Commission employ the IRO?

Where’s the detail and consultation?

The CQC, years back now, made clear that issues of market developing and management were way outside their remit. Their own internal methodology team were though ignored.

PA Consulting were ushered to write and lead on then DofH consultation on the very same issue. PA Consulting ‘engaged’ an existing SofS for Communities to lead on the proposals dressing them up as increasing patients choice. The LGA were soon kept on side.

Nigel Parton, ages ago now, wrote about the deep and surface structures in social work. I don’t know what he’s doing on but he was an authority in Child Protection.

Messages from Research, I think, totalled 21 separate research initiatives like that of Parton’s from Huddersfield University. The University of York made similar contributions on the organisation of organisations, and especially the role of a radical middle ground in social work. Lena Dominelli writing with Robert Adams, who incidentally does know about how nefarious and criminal interests manifest in social work, wrote about the impact of managerialism. The late, Alan Maynard warned that we continue to experiment on vulnerable populations with absolutely zero learning. Rudolf Klein, decades ago made the same warning of an increased risk of what he calls causualisation through the fudged deregulated mechanism of a market approach. And, now almost 70 years ago, Adorno writing in Minima Moralia spoke of the problem of systemically creating ‘blackmail’.

The current proposals lack any depth of understanding in the administrative arrangements of and information management requirements of actually Working Together. The current facinanation with AI will only paint the pictures the data can read. It’s an incomplete dot-to-dot. It is the proverbial elephant in the room. We may well know about the bit we’re touching but there’s no reliable oversight. How the hell can manager’s manage and their staff trust in their judgement?

Trust is a precondition of effective supervision. Anyone familiar with parallel planning knows that breeches of trust show up in subsequent service planning. Records management is where this shows up. The legal gap filled by the creation of the IRO just got way bigger. And staggeringly so.

I have procured Information Management Systems and for sure they’re worth having but never at the expense of social work judgement in decision-making.

* for cpd see the work of Amy.L.Fraher on Decision Making in High Risk Teams and Michael Spivey, on Discovery in Complex Adaptive Systems. Spivey deals with the false pictures, or AI generated, ontic-quales (the value we attach) to data. Fraher, is a distant US cousin and former fighter jet pilot. Erin Fraher, incidentally, has written about the role of social work when developing integrated team approaches. She’s also a distant US cousin. The importance of which relates to the UK propensity of aping the US for trade purposes and neglecting the Scandinavians. Without a clear steer about the long-term protection of Health and Social Work from I’ll suited competitive processes and our professionals being abused within the UK UKREITs fatal mistakes are always more likely.*

*I am formerly Alec Fraher FMICoP, MIHM, AASW which meant I held expert level accreditation in the commissioning of health and social work services. I have trained in social work, public procurement and management accounting previously by Cipfa*

Managing markets, even when they’re quasi-market,is about understanding anti-trust behaviour and accrued dominance of position.

How long will it be before the RCC’s become the dominant provider? That is what has happened before and is, sadly, a sewn in competitive strategy irrespective of first intentions.

All regionally organised procurement hubs have historically behaved this way. It’s not all bad. But the learning is from transport and construction which hardly speaks to transparency and openness, let alone ethical standards of a children’s care.

Do we Care? Professionally bodies such as, CIMA and Cipfa have suggested we don’t. Is professional arrogance a silence to be broken.

What’s the sell-by-date for LASSA, 2030?

Sure, there’s economic activity but what sort is it.

It’s for the public through open and rigorous parliamentary debate to say whether this actually is of a general economic, and therefore limited to ill-equipped procure procedures like Part B Open and Restricted Tendering or is actually Part A procurement and suited to the more nuanced procure procedure, like competitive dialogue. The actual behaviour of commissioning is in keeping with Part A competitive procurement process yet uses Part B procure procedure.

It’s the same, by comparison, as using nurse or doctors holding powers without any follow through with either a s2 or s3 authority to remove a person’s liberty, by reason of the nature and degree of a mental illness and detain them in hospital. It’s wrong. An examination of, say, s20 accommodation or placement with parent regs in repeated failure in foster/adoption care placements would point to similar short circuits. These are the perverse incentives that have created a quasi-market place.

Earlier, like last year, the press coverage of the CMA report said described the scenario as ‘Sleep Walking’ ( The Guardian) into a mess.

The thorny issues of what constitutes and maintains the principle of solidarity, once an EU/EC competence, are now a measure of UK competence. The Country level delegations to the Scottish and Welsh government’s aren’t mentioned. My experience of the Scottish arrangements and use of public procurement is, and refreshingly so, radically different to English Authorities. Put simply, children aren’t lots to be bid against.

The adoption of Regional Commissioning platforms not only further alienates individual Councils, as the purchasing authority, who must retain the actual duty of care responsibilities owed to individual children and their families.
It also muddies their wider duties not to create the conditions which cause harm. OAP have always been contentious for this very reason. Out of sight is out of mind.

Without greater thought and detail on how these proposals actually work the measures will only add to the ‘Black Bag’ experience of children and young people in care.

Commissioning as a procurement procedure most be more clearly specified, and this is entirely possible, and entered into the appropriate statutes and statutory instructions to afford social workers the assurance needed when making placements. The rigour of due diligence, gained through the use of competitive procure procedure maybe an uncomfortable bedfellow. I am yet to find, and I’ve looked at these matters since 2006/7, any ethically compatible path.

The MacAlister Review asked for greater Advocacy and I agree with this but for entirely different reasons.

Where’s the House of Lords, who created the provisions for the IRO, when they’re needed, eh!

Contract aggregates will usually exceed, and by massive margins, the spend authority of individual Councils. Crucially, placement contracts negotiation will have primacy over the Child’s Care Plan.

Disruption events are likely to be used to bump-up costs outside that first procured; during my time as an OAP IRO risk determinations were engineered to drive up cost, and children manipulated by incentives to misbehave. This impacts secure reviews too.

The history, dating back to 2007, of Regional Commissioning isn’t good. It is in fact very poor. There is no basis to establish a ‘freedom of contract’ and that’s because there isn’t a relevant market. There’s no reliable source of information to establish what is going on.

And, sickeningly, the Information Rights of the RCC, the actual Contracting Authority and Providers will, in law, work against, and forcefully so, any individual child or family redress or representation when something goes wrong.

Before the DofE accepts the CMA saying it’s OK to proceed the relationship between Front Frontline, Boston Consulting and the free advertising of Camilla Cavendish in the FT must be tested against a full and proper public debate in the HofC.

The Government ought to be minded about how children’s fatalities bring down their Departments, especially in the run up to an election year. And, especially when the very issues of dodgy procurement and clichés milking public money are etched in the public minds.

The IROs are going to be busy. Do do underestimate the nefarious (in)vested influences indrectly running children’s services, and which will touch uncomfortably up against what should be vetted out. I do hope that information from iicsa, operationation hydrant and the yew tree inquiry has been weighed-in and weighted by the DofE. It’s obviously out side the scope of the CMA to consider this type of thing.

The due diligence, pressure of time and volume of work aren’t good bedfellows. When I did the review both SW’s and Contracting Staff were very, very scared to go on record. Largely because the arrangements made don’t meet with mandatory information management requirements.

This means that child protection legislation is undermined by the secondary legislation embedded in the FOIA.

The DofE historic use of outsourcing shapes the prevailing case law definitions of the term ‘to hold information’.

That this derogation is derived from the Outsourcing and Contracting Regulations Act 1994 is though problematic. That the Outsourcing and Contracting Regulations Act 1994 is, in other words, on the face of the Children Act 2004 is wrong.

The Care Act 2014 has the same derogation of statute to the Outsourcing andContractingRegulations Act 1994.

The net impact is to undermine what are, previously Council held responsibility, a life-time or 100yr obligations owed by the State and originating from the Office of the Dutchy(sp) and granted to, in this instance, the Child.These duties supercede that of the SofS for Education.

It’s about constitutional rights and obligations owed to the child.

In my contact with Council CEO’s, during the course of my review, most CEO’s were on balance more concerned with the macro-economic welfare of the city or region. Priority will always be given to the night-time economy over and above the protection of children and families from harm.

More detailed work is needed, I have asked my MP to raise the concerns I have. And, he has.

*btw the ontological essence or basis of social work is rather unsurprisingly, Advocacy. It’s said, that Advocacy arises from the ethic of caring. Of entering into a relationship with another human being and acting on your own convictions to them and as if they were your own*