The cost of living crisis is ‘severely’ affecting people accessing children’s and adults’ services, fuelling a host of issues including poverty, debt, mental ill-health and domestic conflict, social workers have warned.

The vast majority of respondents to a Community Care survey asking about the effects of the crisis said it was hitting individuals and families they support hard.

More than half (58%) said it was having a ‘severe’ impact on the lives of people accessing service, with a further 33% saying the effect was ‘significant’.

Food bank use and homelessness risks

Dozens of comments left by the 253 survey respondents, about two-thirds of whom said they worked in children’s services, made reference to rising food bank use.

Some warned that local food banks were running out of supplies due to sharply increasing demand and the wider public no longer being able to afford to donate as much.

Many others cited households facing desperate choices between heating and eating, with poverty leading to deteriorating housing conditions and, for some, the risk of homelessness. One social worker said:

[The crisis is affecting] service users massively – most were already experiencing poverty before, now they are in dire straits.”

In all, 86% of survey respondents said they expected to see a large increase in demand for services over the next 12 months as winter arrived and the crisis bit even harder. This week, energy regulator Ofgem raised its price cap for the average household to £3,549 per year from October, almost three times higher than it was a year ago.

‘Clients cancelling a service they need’

Worryingly, among practitioners working in adults’ services, almost half (48%) of respondents said they had seen a large increase in the numbers of people in receipt of council-funded care and support who were struggling to afford care charges.

Almost as many (44%) said they had seen a small increase.

“I have seen clients falling into debt, not able to pay their care charges and asking to cancel a service they need,” said one.

Another worker, based in a front door team, said they were getting “several calls every day” from people feeling suicidal due to cost of living. They said:

Elderly people are refusing to have care due to the cost, which they cannot afford alongside their bills.”

The social worker added. “We are also getting calls from people with no money for food, who need food banks, and calls from people being evicted as they cannot afford bills and rent.”

A number of respondents noted that the previous decade’s austerity policies had meant there were now far fewer services where people could get support and advice around issues such as debt management or maximising benefits.

“People are not buying medication that is required, not visiting families because they are unable to afford transport or fuel for their car, and not socialising, due to costs,” said one. “So they are often becoming very isolated.”

‘Unachievable’ need for financial support for families

A similarly bleak outlook was apparent among children’s social workers contributing to the survey.

In all 49%, told us they had seen a large increase in the number of families receiving financial support under children’s social care legislation – such as section 17 of the Children Act – in their areas. A further 37% said they had seen a small increase in the number of families in receipt of financial support. One practitioner said:

Every family known to social care needs support via section 17 – every family. It’s unachievable.”

Others said the cost of living crisis was affecting some families more than others, with one commenting that parents in low-paid work had been hit particularly hard compared with others whose incomes came exclusively from benefits.

“I am seeing lots more referrals coming through because of financial pressures,” the social worker said. “The knock-on effects [include] mental ill-health, stress, domestic abuse and abuse of children – people are struggling to manage, and feel immense shame in needing to access things like food banks due to debt.”

Besides hardship around food and fuel, social workers highlighted struggles particular to families with children, such as being unable to afford to buy school uniform or to pay for activities.

Worsening mental health for parents and children

Another children’s practitioner said they had seen a “huge rise” in mental health issues among both parents and children as stress levels soared. “This is very evident in school, in loss of concentration on learning, self-harming, thoughts of suicide and early signs of eating disorders.” The social worker said all these impacts were being seen in older primary school-aged children.

Aside from families involved with help and protection services, a number of survey respondents also highlighted how the crisis has been affecting children in care, with several noting that foster carers in their area were facing hardship.

“[Some are] handing in their notice as they can’t afford to continue with rising living costs,” said one, echoing the findings of a recent survey by the FosterWiki information and advice service. “This means children and young people having to be placed well out of county, miles away from friends and schools, loads of them without suitable placements.”

‘A current of anxiety’

Looking ahead, few social workers, regardless of their specialism, saw any cause for optimism as winter approached.

The combination of food and fuel poverty, along with people being unable to meet care charges, will have grim and inevitable knock-on effects, adults’ practitioners warned.

“[It will lead] to safeguarding concerns, self-neglect and safety issues – and an increase in hospital admissions as a result,” said one.

Several respondents pointed out that people who might previously have ‘got by’ thanks to their support networks were likely to increasingly struggle as those around them were forced to take on more paid work to support themselves.

“Unpaid care takes up a large portion of care provided to individuals in the UK,” said one. “Unpaid carers may have to go into employment or increase hours in employment due to cost of living.”

Meanwhile children’s social workers said they foresaw additional strain on family budgets, further increasing tensions in people’s homes, leading to more conflict, abuse and neglect.

“It feels like everyone is always on the verge of a crisis – but there is an underlying current of anxiety, fear and anger that seems ready to bubble to the surface,” said one children’s practitioner. “I think once the summer is over and autumn hits this will magnify massively into a much more overt presentation from families.”

‘Bleak reality’

Responding to the findings of Community Care’s survey, Steve Crocker, the president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), said the cost of living crisis was “affecting households across the country, including the children and families we support and our staff”.

“These findings highlight the bleak reality for many of the children and families we work with, and the situation will only get worse in the winter months without further practical solutions from government to support families,” Crocker added.

“While local authorities up and down the country are working hard to provide services and support to their local residents to help with rising costs, we urgently need government to provide the long term solutions that are needed during this difficult time.

“We expect many more children and families will fall into poverty because of the rising costs of food, fuel and energy, yet there is no national strategy to reduce child poverty in England,” Crocker said. “Given what we know about the impact of poverty on children’s outcomes and life chances addressing it must be a priority for the new Prime Minister.”

A spokesperson for the British Association of Social Workers directed Community Care to a number of recent statements by the organisation. This included a submission to the children’s social care review that described the cost of living crisis as “a crisis for social workers [who] see the impact it has on people we work with every day”.

BASW was also a co-signatory to a recent letter to Conservative leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak by a group of charities and other organisations that described the impact of the cost of living crisis on low-income households as “the gravest issue our country faces”.

Ofsted has praised “highly effective” information sharing as it noted continuing progress at Hull council’s children’s services, which were graded ‘inadequate’ in 2019.

A sixth monitoring visit to the Yorkshire authority, focusing on services for children in need of help and protection, found social workers reporting their caseloads were manageable and that they had time to see children frequently.

“This has been greatly assisted by the effective duty arrangements of social workers and managers at the front door, augmented by improvements to early information-sharing and identification of children’s needs,” inspectors wrote following the July visit.

Children and families referred to services in Hull were now receiving “timely and appropriate” responses, with thresholds well understood across a cohesive local safeguarding partnership and “increasingly skilled” workers being supported by solid management oversight, boosting morale.

Social workers also gave positive feedback on the training and learning opportunities now available, which they said were “informing their interventions with families and improving the quality of their practice”.

‘Leaders know their services well’

Following its ‘inadequate’ judgment in May 2019, services in Hull continued to struggle at first, with the senior management team changing in 2020 after a monitoring visit uncovered ongoing deterioration.

Interim director of children’s services Nicola Clemo was replaced last year by a new permanent DCS, Pauline Turner, who has overseen steady process since joining from Sandwell Children’s Trust.

Ofsted’s previous monitoring visit during spring 2022 praised Hull’s services for care leavers, with the Department for Education (DfE) ending intervention in the council earlier this month on the recommendation of its commissioner, Paul Moffat.

The DfE said at the time that it would be continuing to monitor progress at six-monthly intervals through a non-statutory improvement notice.

After their latest visit, inspectors noted that corporate financial investment by Hull council had driven improvements to the front door and assessment teams, with managers now able to track progress accurately thanks to “much improved” performance management systems.

“The local authority’s much-improved self-assessment, together with accurate performance data, means that senior leaders know their service very well,” Ofsted said.

“Scrutiny of performance and improvement activity is driven through robust and independently chaired improvement board meetings,” inspectors added. “Elected members challenge and scrutinise performance data and information, and hold the leadership team to account for the quality of practice to families.”

‘We are taking big strides’

Responding to the findings of the monitoring visit, Turner said she was “very hopeful” that the next full inspection of children’s services would see an improved grading.

“I am delighted that Hull is continuing to show real, positive improvements in how we support children, young people and their families, and this is thanks to the commitment and dedication of our staff,” she added.

Matt Jukes, the council’s chief executive, said: “Our young people and their families deserve the very highest standards of support and I am extremely pleased that, through the dedication, hard work and commitment of our staff and partners, we are taking big strides in the improvement of our services to deliver that.”

The children’s minister, Brendan Clarke-Smith, said it was “good to see Hull’s focus on improving their children’s services”.

“By listening to children’s experiences and creating strong relationships with social workers they are directly helping some of the most vulnerable families,” he added. “The commitment of local leaders and hard-working professionals like those in Hull are all part of our nationwide efforts to improve children’s social care across the country.”

Proposed amendments to rules governing social workers will go ahead following a consultation by the Department for Education (DfE).

The changes to social work regulations largely affect fitness-to-practice processes, as well as related matters around information sharing.

They are likely to come into force on 1 December subject to approval by Parliament, to align with Social Work England’s registration cycle, the DfE said in a consultation response published this month.

Social Work England’s executive director of regulation, Philip Hallam, said: “We are pleased the legislative changes we identified as being necessary to improve our work to efficiently and effectively protect the public continue to be taken forward by the Department for Education following the outcome of this consultation.”

In all, the DfE’s exercise, which took place between March and May this year, attracted 48 responses, 22 of which came from individual social workers.

Organisations including the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), Ofsted and Unison also submitted responses.

Expanded disclosures

Most of the proposals contained in the consultation attracted strong backing from respondents, ranging from 68% to 94%.

Key changes include:

• Expanding Social Work England’s duties around disclosing information on registrants – and applicants to the register – to specified organisations, including social work employers, NHS bodies and fellow regulators, where this is deemed to be in the public interest.
• Amending regulations so that all fitness-to-practise sanctions made against social workers, with the exception of final orders, will appear immediately on the register, regardless of any appeal.
• Giving the regulator discretion to grant voluntary removal from the register where there are fitness-to-practise issues, with such decisions and “further details [Social Work England] deems necessary” to be published, provided these do not infringe on individuals’ rights.
• A series of changes relating to fitness-to-practise investigation proceedings, including broadening the regulator’s powers to require disclosure of information and to initiate interim orders, and clarifying Social Work England’s administrative responsibilities around case management.
• Making provision for interim orders to come into force immediately, even where they are being appealed.
• Giving case examiners, as well as adjudicators, the power to impose removal orders in certain circumstances.
• Amending the review period relating to interim orders from three to six months.
• Making provision for warning orders to be extended for up to five years rather than three, as is currently the case.

The amendment regarding the immediate publication of fitness-to-practise outcomes was the most contentious, with almost a fifth of respondents saying they disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Most of those opposed to the change cited fears that it could unfairly impact on social workers.

Other concerns raised included that expanding the regulator’s powers to require information could place a burden on individuals and organisations, and that the proposals around extending warning orders were “excessive” and could increase uncertainty around social workers’ fitness to practise.

‘Supporting effective public protection’

In its published response, the DfE said the changes would “further improve the regulator’s operational efficiency in support of effective public protection”.

It added: “The DfE intends to take forward the Social Workers (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2022, which will support Social Work England to improve its processes and procedures for fitness to practise concerns and ensure [it] is able to confidently disclose relevant information to those who need it.”

The DfE’s statement said the draft regulations would be introduced to Parliament “shortly” but that there would be a delay of at least two months before they came into force to “give social workers and other interested parties time to take account of the changes” and for Social Work England to update its documentation.

The Welsh Government has opened a consultation on plans to eliminate profit-making residential and fostering provision for children in care.

The proposals, which form part of a cooperation agreement between the Labour administration and the Plaid Cymru group in the Welsh Senedd, would restrict registration of service providers to those operating a non-profit model.

New providers seeking to register with Care Inspectorate Wales would have to demonstrate not-for-profit status from 1 April 2026, with existing for-profit firms needing to transition by 1 April 2027, under new primary legislation sought by the Welsh Government.

Consultation documents said work was “currently being undertaken” to support private providers wishing to move away from profit-making models, and to assist non-profit organisations looking to expand their provision.

Plan to cut care population

The documents added that local authorities are also being supported to “better model and forecast future placement requirements, alongside reducing the number of children in care”.

Cutting those totals and ensuring more children can remain with their families is a key aim for the Welsh Government.

“Our ambition is to redesign how we look after children and young people, and eliminating private profit from the care of children is a key component of this,” said Julie Morgan, the Welsh Government’s deputy minister for social services.

“Children are at the heart of everything we do, and they have told us that they do not want to be cared for by privately owned organisations that make a profit from their experience of being in care.”

Reliance on private sector

As of March 2021, the rate of Welsh children in care was 115.3 per 10,000 of the population, far above the 67 per 10,000 for their English counterparts.

Of 1,068 residential places available as of July 2022, 85% were with private providers, consultation documents said, with nine of Wales’s 22 local authorities wholly reliant on private-sector children’s homes.

In March this year, a review by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK government’s competition watchdog, described the children’s social care market as “dysfunctional” and in need of overhaul to tackle high prices and a shortage of placements.

The CMA warned that profits among the largest providers of both residential and foster care were higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market.

However, it rejected restricting for-profit provision, arguing that doing so would not necessarily deliver significant cost savings and could choke the supply of places, at least in the short term.

‘Invest in keeping families together’

Alison Holmes, the national director of BASW Cymru, said removing profit from the care of looked after children and young people was something the organisation “fully supports”.

But Hulmes said the potential impact on placement availability – including possibly meaning more children being sent further from home – was a concern.

“We would like to see an investment in the numbers of social workers we have in Wales, who can use their skills in strengthening families to remain together, so we don’t keep on removing children into the care system,” she added.

“Addressing the recruitment and retention crisis in social work is essential and we will continue to work with the Welsh Government, the regulator, and key partners to find sustainable, ethical and long-term pro-family solutions.”

‘Significantly worried’

Meanwhile Peter Sandiford, the chief executive of the Children’s Homes Association (CHA), which represents independent providers, said he was “significantly worried” about the consultation, including the potential cost implications of the proposals.

Sandiford said there was a “significant risk” that the proposals would “result in large-scale closure of good provision without any alternatives being put in place”.

He added that more children could end up placed in unregulated provision, or sent over the border to England, where they may be deprived of being able to interact in their first language.

“We are also concerned about the consultation being commenced in the summer holidays and that there is nothing included about how children, their families, their carers and others will be able to respond taking into account their understanding of these complicated technical issues,” Sandiford said.

Sandiford said the CHA continued to favour reform of commissioning practices, in line with the recommendations of the CMA review, and that he would be writing to the Welsh Government “to set out our views and express our concerns”.

The new consultation includes discussion of action around commissioning, which would complement registration restrictions by limiting local authorities to purchasing placements from non-profit providers.

Such a measure would go far further than the CMA’s recommendation that new regional bodies be set up to strengthen local authorities’ hand in sourcing the right placements for children.

‘Too little advance thinking’

Harvey Gallagher, the chief executive of the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers, also cited the CMA’s recommendations and claimed the Welsh Government had done “too little advance thinking” despite eliminating profit from the care system being a manifesto commitment.

Gallagher, who has been involved with an implementation board for the policy, told Community Care that he had not seen evidence of robust prior consultation with young people from the administration, with a planned summit to seek their views on profit-making coming too late.

“This programme has caused anxiety amongst independent fostering agencies of all shapes and sizes, for profit and not for profit,” Gallagher said. “Many were started by foster carers or social workers who wanted to offer something different and better, and local authorities by and large value the services provided.”

He added that in his view, the consultation “does not easily lend itself to addressing tough issues” around sufficiency, and potential legal hurdles including around competition and adequately defining ‘profit’.

The consultation documents acknowledge that the impact of the Welsh Government’s plans could be undermined by “practices that go against [their] spirit and intention” by providers’ parent firms inflating fees or otherwise extracting profit via backdoor routes.

Gallagher said the NAFP “will continue to actively engage with Welsh Government and sector colleagues to try to ensure that children do not come off worse as a result of this policy”.

Expanding mandatory reporting of risk

Besides the proposals to eliminate profit-making in provision for children in care, the new consultation also seeks input on a range of other topics. These are:

• Whether mandatory duties to report children and adults at risk of harm, abuse or neglect – within the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 – should be expanded to apply directly to individuals within relevant bodies, and whether this would better protect individuals from harm.
• Changes to improve how Social Care Wales (SCW) supports and regulates the social care workforce, and how Care Inspectorate Wales regulates and inspects services.
• Proposals to extend the definition of a ‘social care worker’ to include all childcare and play workers, which would enable them to be regulated by SCW.
• Enabling access to direct payments for adults who are eligible for NHS continuing healthcare.

The Welsh Government’s consultation runs until midnight on 7 November 2022.

Social care’s “increasingly unsustainable reliance” on agency staff needs urgent government intervention, a provider body has warned.

Research by Care England found almost eight in 10 providers (78%) were using more, or significantly more, agency staff in May and June this year than they had been in April 2021, found the survey, answered by 95 care home, home care and supported living providers, collectively responsible for 70,000 registered beds.

An even larger majority (88%) said it had become more difficult to book temporary workers than in April 2021, with a similar proportion (86%) stating that the cost of agency staff had risen over that period. Providers said the cost of engaging an agency worker was double that of a permanent staff member for both carer roles (£19.57 versus £9.90 per hour) and nursing positions (£37.56 versus £19.49).

Respondents also said that their increasing reliance on agency staff was affecting quality of care, with 73% finding locums less reliable.

Reliance on agency staff ‘unsustainable’

Care England chief executive Martin Green said the sector’s “costly and increasingly unsustainable reliance on agency staff” was a response to the 52% rise in vacancies – equivalent to 55,000 positons – during 2021-22, reported recently by Skills for Care.

Green added: “The use of agency staff has been a bandage over more deep-routed recruitment and retention issues, which now, expectedly, are unravelling. The results of our recent survey demonstrate the severity of these issues, with the usage and cost of agency staff increasing dramatically over the last year. This is not only affecting the quality and continuity of care but compounding pressures on the NHS.

A range of factors have been cited for social care’s staffing shortage, including burnout relating to working through the pandemic, employees leaving for better-paid roles in other sectors such as retail, and comparable jobs in the NHS offering more money.

Just under eight in 10 (77%) of respondents to Care England’s survey, which included residential and domiciliary care and supported living providers, said their staff were leaving the sector, according to exit interviews. Two-thirds cited pay and just under half mentioning stress.

However, some of those who left roles due to pay were in fact moving into higher-paid agency work.

Almost nine out of 10 (86%) of respondents to Care England’s survey described the hourly rates invoiced for by agencies as being challenging for their organisation to meet, while a similar proportion (84%) said they were having to pay ‘higher’ or ‘significantly higher’ rates than previously.

As well as employees leaving, survey participants reported that around 11% of their workforce had moved from permanent roles to zero-hours contracts over the past year, with 7% moving from permanent to bank roles.

“The effect is an increasingly transient workforce which necessitates an increased reliance on agency staff that, in turn, threatens the quality and continuity of care,” the report said. “It was also noted that unregulated agency fees created negative work environments, increased the likelihood of unsafe care practices, increased the pressure on the NHS, and further destabilised an already unsustainable care sector.”

Government action ‘wholly insufficient’

Last week, the government announced plans to expand overseas recruitment, while it is also allocating £500m to boost the career development and wellbeing of social care staff over the next three years. 

However, Green said this was “wholly insufficient”, with the £500m amounting to “5.7p per hour for each sector employee; this does not begin to touch the sides of such vast workforce pressures”.

Care England backed calls, issued most recently by the House of Commons’ levelling up select committee, for the government to inject £7bn a year extra into adult social care, including to boost recruitment and retention, while also urged action to tackle use of locum staff, including consideration of a cap on agency fees, as is the case in the NHS.

“Whether it be a proportional cap on agency fees, a mandatory approved framework or further discussions with stakeholders in the sector to come up with pragmatic solutions, this is a matter of urgency; not just for the ASC workforce, but for vulnerable people in receipt of care, and the wider population,” it said.

A government spokesperson said: “Our social care workforce is valued, appreciated and supported, which is why we are providing at least £500m to develop and support the workforce.”

They added: “Most care workers are employed by private sector providers who set their pay and terms and conditions, independent of central government.”

Ofsted has warned an ‘inadequate’ council that local children in need still face “too much variability” in children’s services’ practice.

After their fourth monitoring visit to Trafford, which received the lowest possible grade in 2019, inspectors found that assessments, CIN planning and social work supervision and oversight remained inconsistent.

More positively, they noted that senior leaders were in many cases aware of shortcomings and were taking steps to address them.

Despite turnover having dropped from previous levels, the borough was still reliant on a high number of agency social workers, Ofsted said.

Patchy supervision and auditing

At their last full inspection, inspectors heavily criticised bosses at Trafford over their lack of awareness of how services had been declining, concluding they had “no understanding of the current quality of practice”.

But more recently, and since the appointment of current director of children’s services Jill McGregor in 2020, monitoring visits had found that a new performance management framework had led to much improved oversight.

After the latest visit, Ofsted highlighted “significant” ongoing auditing activity as being a positive, with issues uncovered in performance data leading to thematic reviews.

But they added that the quality of auditing continued to be patchy, with “inconsistent involvement of family members and practitioners”.

“Audit actions are sometimes too focused on compliance and are not followed up in a timely way, which limits the potential for wider learning to be disseminated quickly, and to drive practice improvement forward,” Ofsted said.

At an operational management level, inspectors found a similarly uneven picture, with supervision sessions “not always sufficiently reflective to help social workers to explore what strategies might work”.

They said there was “limited evidence” of managers challenging the quality of assessments and plans, with oversight “sometimes [lacking] sufficient impact to ensure that social work interventions are purposeful and effective”.

‘Limited effectiveness’ of social work interventions

The same issues were found to be apparent on the front line, with some assessments “detailed” and “clear” but others lacking a thorough explanation of parenting capacity, missing chronologies or not completed on time.

“The quality of CIN plans is also variable,” Ofsted said. “Plans identify children’s needs accurately, and are routinely reviewed, but they are not always updated as children’s circumstances change.

“It is not always clear from plans what strategies should be used by social workers to address a lack of engagement by children and families,” inspectors said. “This limits the effectiveness of social work interventions with children in need of support,” they added, noting that this was an area leaders were looking at.

Ofsted also highlighted issues in Trafford’s children with additional needs (CWAN) team, where staffing problems meant “the quality of work is not strong”, with some instances of drift and delay.

An agency project team had been commissioned to try to address this, along with new development plans being offered to CWAN social workers. A number of other positives initiatives were noted in the letter sent to McGregor, the DCS, including a management development programme to help make supervision more consistent, and training for all staff aimed at improving direct work.

Social workers told Ofsted that they liked working in Trafford, with caseloads becoming more manageable and managers “visible and supportive”.

‘We are not complacent’

A spokesperson for Trafford Council said: “The inspectors have noted the quality time our social workers spend with children and families, developing good relationships. We will continue to work closely with children, young people and  their families to make sure they are at the centre of all we do.

“We have also worked hard with our partners to provide the right help and  support to our children and families and strengthen the quality of our services and interventions. Our progress during this period has been recognised by Ofsted.

“The importance of our strong and stable senior leadership team has also been noted by Ofsted, along with the fact that there is a more stable workforce who enjoy working in Trafford.

“However we are not complacent and we recognise there are still areas where we need to improve and we will focus our efforts on ensuring we offer the best services possible to our children and families.”

Large-scale structural change of children’s services is “no panacea” for challenges facing councils, the Local Government Association has said after research for the organisation highlighted important factors that can deliver successful service redesign.

The study concluded that factors such as political will, specific leadership qualities and the willingness to take a long view around achieving service improvements were the most important enablers of successful change.

The research drew on the experiences of children’s services trusts, areas that have gone into improvement partnerships, and counties that have been reorganised to create new unitary authorities.

It concluded that while such changes could be valuable tools towards delivering benefits – including improving organisational identity, focus and culture, and working more flexibly and innovatively – making them did not in itself offer any guarantee of a positive outcome.

‘Relentless focus on quality of practice’

Instead, success was more likely to be linked to the presence of crucial building blocks, and to key ‘design principles’ relevant across a range of different ways of delivering children’s services (see box), the study found.

“[Structural change] can be an enabler to create the leadership, staffing and financial capacity to deliver improvement,” an LGA spokesperson said. “Without these changes, and a relentless focus on the quality of practice, structural change cannot on its own improve services for children.”

Local circumstances were also crucial in terms of understanding the types of structural change that might work in a given area, the LGA said.

“The importance of the local context is also emphasised in the report’s findings that children’s services work best when services are integrated, where they are well connected with the rest of the council and where they are firmly rooted in local communities,” the spokesperson said.

Capacity for change

The LGA’s research, carried out by the Isos Partnership consultancy, aimed to identify approaches to structural change that had worked well, especially for children and families, with a view to informing future work by local authorities.

Its fieldwork drew on the experiences of arms-length trusts set up in Worcestershire and in Kingston, Richmond, and Windsor and Maidenhead, where Achieving for Children operates services. It also looked at partnerships between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and the bi-borough areas of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, as well as local government reorganisation within Dorset.

The research team additionally spoke to senior leaders at Birmingham, Northamptonshire and Sunderland, all of which had experience of children’s trusts being set up – and in Northamptonshire’s case of local government reorganisation too.

Jill Colbert, the chief executive of Together for Children, which manages services in Sunderland and is now ‘outstanding’, said she had contributed “to support the wider understanding of the role the [alternative delivery model] in Sunderland has played in improvement”.

She said she hoped her input would “enable an informed insight of what works in children’s social care, so we can build effective intervention programmes based on the difference they make for children rather than on ideology or custom and practice”.

Common building blocks

In most of the areas where children’s trusts have been established – and also in the case of the Hampshire/Isle of Wight partnership – structural change had effectively been pushed on the local authority areas in the form of statutory directions from the Department for Education following poor Ofsted ratings.

This enforcement approach was tied to a crucial factor identified as influencing the direction of change – whether sufficient capacity to achieve it was deemed to exist within an organisation. Two other important considerations were found to be whether a restructured organisation was big enough to bear the cost of an experienced DCS and new leaders and specialists, and whether suitable high-performing neighbours were present that could enter a partnership.

But whatever the approach pursued, the study found “a remarkable degree of similarity” in the crucial building blocks without which successful change was unlikely to happen, which included:

• A long-term commitment to a change model, giving the time and space for new structures and practices to bed in, backed by local political will – which has not always been present in cases where the DfE has intervened.
• The presence of senior leaders with particular skills, such as taking a “visible and hands-on” approach focusing on practice and performance, being open and willing to listen and being able to make staff feel safe.
• Effective communication of why change is happening, clearly focusing on the impact on children and families and how staff can contribute, and extending to co-design – including by communities – of structural design details.
• Linking structural reorganisation to positive cultural change, including around institutional values, which can act to raise morale among existing employees – making them more likely to stay – and attract new ones.
• Carrying out change using a strong project-management approach and within coherent frameworks, especially relating to organisations’ governance and accountability structures and their IT systems.

The presence or absence of such factors has been highlighted in Ofsted reports and evaluations of a number of areas that have undergone structural change. Experts interviewed by Community Care in 2020 made similar remarks in relation to how successful the practice of setting up independent trusts to manage poor-performing children’s services departments has been overall.

‘Grounded in experience’

Ray Jones, an emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University and St. George’s, University of London who has been an outspoken critic of removing children’s services departments from direct council control, said the report’s conclusions were “sensible” and “grounded [in] experience and wisdom”.

“Too often, organisational change has been imposed by politicians, civil servants and corporate managers, with little understanding or expertise regarding children’s social services,” Jones said. He said a fixation on “big bang changes” for their own sake was the path to “churn and chaos”.

“What this report highlights is the importance of building a stable, confident, experienced workforce, close to communities, with continuity over time, and with leaders who are focused on the needs of children and families, stay close to frontline practitioners and teams, and where there is an honest and open culture,” Jones added.

Inspectors have praised a council’s focus on children’s participation in shaping services, as they graded it ‘good’ for the first time in a decade.

After visiting Coventry council earlier in the summer, Ofsted said children’s “strong influence” within the local authority was a “real strength” thanks to leaders’ commitment, and was helping to drive positive culture change.

“Young people are involved at all levels of the service, as individuals influencing their own plans to groups highlighting the need to strengthen or develop areas of service,” the inspectors’ report said.

Children and young people were involved in training social workers and councillors, and in helping to commission mental health support for care leavers, it added.

“All of this ensures that children’s services are responsive to children and young people’s needs,” Ofsted said.

‘Deep understanding of children’s views’

Improving how the needs of children were being recognised and met in the borough was one of the key recommendations made when Ofsted last inspected Coventry’s children’s services in 2017, when they were found to require improvement.

Since then, the inspectorate said, there had been both strong political support and “significant” investment that had delivered better early help services and an expanded family group conferencing offer, as well as new specialist teams.

Social workers’ visits to children were described as “purposeful” and their reports “sensitively written”, with creative direct work helping them understand children’s circumstances and communicate concerns to parents.

“The use of life-story work by social workers in help and protection services is a strength,” Ofsted said. “It gives workers a deep understanding of children’s views and the important relationships they have in the family [which] enables social workers to be more effective in their intervention.”

The quality of multi-agency working, underpinned by “constructive” strategic partnerships, was also highlighted by inspectors, for example around local measures to protect children at risk of exploitation.

“Particularly strong links between children’s services and the police lead to effective mapping and disruption work,” inspectors said. “Children and young people who are at risk of exploitation receive thorough and timely assessments, which lead to detailed plans where a range of resources are used to keep them safer.”

‘Engaged social work group’

Improvements in the city had been driven by “drive and determination” from a stable senior leadership team, who had a solid understanding of social work practice, Ofsted found.

“A comprehensive quality assurance framework has been developed which involves a range of different audit tools across children’s services,” inspectors said. “The focus of the framework on learning and the involvement of social workers has strengthened the approach [which] has meant the local authority has a much more accurate picture of children’s services.

“There is also an engaged social work group that understands areas of strength and weakness and is positive about change,” the report added, noting that social workers were positive about working in Coventry.

Despite the mostly upbeat assessment, inspectors found a number of areas in which improvements could be made, in particular around the consistency of social work supervision.

Ofsted also warned that older children who were homeless too often received a patchy service, that private fostering assessments needed to improve and that some children in care experienced too many changes in social worker.

‘Not the end of our journey’

Responding to the inspection report, John Gregg, Coventry’s director of children’s services, said the improved rating had “only been made possible with the support of our amazing young people, their families and their carers and through our work with partners”.

“We have worked to improve outcomes for the children and young people of the city and will continue to do so,” he added, praising the “enthusiasm and dedication” of staff and partners. “We have a lot to be proud of, but we will study the report and work on those areas that can be improved and continue our work to give the best service possible to the children and young people of Coventry and their families.”

Pat Seaman, the council’s cabinet member for children and young people, said she was “delighted” with the report.

“Everyone should be proud of the achievements and the progress made, but this is not the end of our journey,” she said. “The children and families in Coventry deserve the very best and we will continue to strive to improve to achieve ‘outstanding’ next time.”

A third of looked-after children aged 16 and 17 were in unregulated settings last year, Department for Education figures show.

Young asylum-seeking children and others in section 20 accommodation – rather than on care orders – were disproportionately represented in these settings, while the sector was largely provided by the private sector, according to the statistics, released on Thursday (14 July).

The findings come ahead of the introduction next year of Ofsted regulation of these placements against new national standards, in the wake of widespread safeguarding concerns, including in relation to children being placed in settings such as caravans, settings or barges.

However, the policy has proved controversial because the services – unlike counterparts in children’s homes – will not be required to provide young people with ‘care’ and Ofsted will inspect providers as a whole, not individual settings.

This has sparked accusations from children’s rights campaigners of a two-tier system under which 16- and 17-year-olds in these settings would receive inadequate provision and be placed at greater risk, compared with those in foster care or children’s homes.

Fall in use of unregulated care following sharp rise

The number of 16- and 17-year-olds in unregulated care fell by 7% in the year to March 2021, to 5,980, having more than doubled from 2013-20. Just over three-quarters were aged 17 in the settings which, since September 2021, have been barred to children aged under 16.

There was a shift in provision from independent to semi-independent settings – which involve a greater level of support.

Of the 5,980, 4,120 (69%) were living semi-independently, nearly double the 2,210 who were doing so in 2018. Meanwhile 1,860 were living independently, almost 1,000 fewer than were doing so three years previously.

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children made up a disproportionate number of those living in unregulated accommodation, accounting for 32% of those living independently and 34% of those living semi-independently, compared with just 18% of all 16- and 17-year-olds in care.

The majority – 69% in independent settings and 70% in semi-independent provision, compared with 41% of all looked-after children aged 16 and 17 – were in section 20 accommodation. This involves cases where a child is in care with the agreement of those with parental responsibility (PR) or because no one has PR for them, as with young asylum seekers, or they have been abandoned.

The vast majority (77% for independent settings, 84% for semi-independent) of children in unregulated accommodation were living in private provision, compared with only 54% of all 16- and 17-year-old looked-after children. The proportion was similar to children’s home placements, 79% of which were delivered by the private sector as of March 2022.

‘Unintended consequences’

While children’s rights campaigners have argued that these settings should not be subject to lesser regulation than children’s homes, councils have raised concerns that regulation of so-called supported accommodation may worsen the insufficiency of placements for looked-after children.

Addressing council directors at last week’s Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) conference, Ofsted national director for social care, Yvette Stanley said: “We know that regulating this provision for the first time will lead to unintended consequences. I know you will be talking to your providers about whether they intend to register and forming contingency plans if they do not.”

She said Ofsted would take a flexible approach to regulating the sector, which will be referred to as “supported accommodation”

While such settings are supposed to provide support, not care, Stanley stressed the two types of provision could not be easily separated.

“We absolutely don’t want providers to think that providing any kind of ‘care’, however temporary, to young people will mean they are automatically operating illegally,” she said. “High-quality supported accommodation should be caring, kind and nurturing. We will make this clear in the inspection framework and guidance.”

And though Ofsted would be inspecting providers of supported accommodation as a whole, Stanley said inspectors would be able to examine “poor or declining” settings.

Risks around delay in inspecting settings

While Ofsted will start registering supported accommodation providers in April 2023, it will not start inspecting them until April 2024, Stanley confirmed.

However, Jonathan Stanley, principal partner at the National Centre of Excellence for Residential Child Care (NCERCC), said the sector needed to be monitored sooner, in the context of it being about the same size as the children’s home sector, with some placements costing “five-figure sums per week”.

He added: “It needs urgent transitions arrangements for both regulation and procurement/commissioning. It cannot be left for two years.”

The leader of Telford council has pledged to fund specialist child sexual exploitation staff “not just for the next five years, but beyond” after an investigation into decades of abuse strongly criticised its historic response.

The independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Telford, led by Tom Crowther QC, found the council and other agencies, including West Mercia Police, blamed victims and ignored abuse. On the latter point the inquiry found “nervousness” about stoking racial tensions, by investigating Asian men suspected of exploitation, was a factor.

Long into the last decade, and after a police investigation, Operation Chalice, culminated in 2013 with seven men’s convictions, the council failed to properly resource, organise and prioritise specialist CSE services, the inquiry found.

Telford’s children abused through exploitation (CATE) team, which at times consisted of just a single employee with no appropriate social work oversight, was described as being a “poor relation” to safeguarding services, which themselves experienced longstanding staffing issues.

The CATE team was almost axed entirely several times as CSE was seen as a lower priority or something that “was over”, with Crowther describing some thinking within the council and local safeguarding children board as “staggering”.

Matters were found to have improved since 2016. But Crowther recommended the council commit to “the continued existence of the CATE Team… at no less than its current strength in both numbers and budget (adjusted for inflation), for a period of no fewer than five years” from the report’s publication.

He made a similar recommendation in relation to West Mercia Police’s child exploitation team.

At a full council meeting on 14 July, Shaun Davies, leader of Telford and Wrekin’s Labour-controlled council, acknowledged that funding of the “dedicated professionals” tackling CSE was a key concern among survivors of abuse.

“The report proposes we make sure the team is properly funded for the next five years,” he said. “I make a personal commitment that for as long as I and our team are running the council, that funding will be protected and I’m sure I speak for everybody in the chamber [when I say] that will be the case for not just the next five years, but beyond.”

‘No attempt’ to put CSE service on sound footing

The inquiry found it was “clear there was a problem” with CSE in Telford from the 1990s and that information was coming from “the community, schools, youth workers [and even] the local press”.

The CATE team came into existence as a “ground-level scheme” formed by youth workers “who had knowledge of the problem and were unprepared simply to stand by”.

But the council’s safeguarding services “quite simply failed to recognise that CSE was a child protection issue”, with the CATE team being sited within youth services and not granted access to relevant IT systems until 2017.

Children’s services imposed arbitrary lines that meant social workers would only investigate CSE cases where victims were under 14 or where parents were implicated in abuse.

“During the initial years, there was no attempt by the [local safeguarding children’s board], by safeguarding or by any politician to put the CATE project on a sound, sustainable financial footing,” the inquiry found.

‘Worst aspects of bureaucracy’

In 2009, in the midst of Operation Chalice, the CATE team consisted of a single unsupervised individual. Despite being integrated into safeguarding services soon afterwards, the council had “no long-term plan for the team and intended its effective erasure”, cutting a senior staff member and conceiving an ill-defined plan to ‘mainstream’ its work among other teams.

While the CATE team survived a 2012 restructure, it was rehomed within the council’s Cohesion department, which lacked relevant management expertise, and temporarily dwindled again to a single staff member with an “impossible” workload.

In 2013 the LSCB, which the report heavily criticised for continually setting up and dismantling exploitation-focused subgroups in an “embrace of the worst excesses of bureaucracy”, decided CSE need no longer be treated as a priority. The year after, in the context of rising demand, the local authority again considered scrapping the senior CATE practitioner’s role.

“I am driven to the view that the council thought CSE had ended with the listing of the first Chalice trial and that no further response was necessary,” Crowther wrote.

Post-2016 ‘transformation’

After a meeting of Telford and Wrekin’s children’s scrutiny committee with the CATE team in 2015 highlighted capacity problems, and with the team reintegrated with safeguarding services the following year, the inquiry found it had been “transformed”.

“The Council has, since 2016, finally recognised the importance of the work done by the CATE Team and put that work on a sound financial footing,” Crowther wrote. “The team is properly staffed and supervised [and] is an integrated part of the council’s provision for children and no longer a ‘poor relation’.”

A 2018 review by CSE charity NWG described CATE workers as a “an asset to Telford and Wrekin” and praised its “seamless” relationship with wider child protection services.

The inquiry report noted that the team, now led by a qualified social worker, has the full-time equivalent of 11.6 workers despite receiving the same number of referrals in 2019-20 as it did nine years earlier. The additional capacity was mentioned in Ofsted’s most recent inspection of Telford and Wrekin, where services moved to ‘outstanding’ from the ‘requires improvement’ grade given in 2016.

“The size of the CATE Team was dramatically smaller in 2010/2011,” Crowther noted. “This demonstrates to me the extent of historic underfunding of the CATE service.”

Recommendations on improving pathways and staff training

The inquiry found the CATE team’s remit was still focused on a “victim behaviour modification approach”, which it said the council should strive to avoid. Pathway mapping documentation did not reflect the “fluidity and flexibility” that witnesses described the service as now providing, added the report.

The inquiry also remarked on examples of “regrettable phraseology” still present within the CATE pathway, which, for example, referred to children “involved in” exploitation rather than reflecting the presence of coercion and lack of control. It recommended the CATE pathway be reviewed and updated to better demonstrate the service’s function to the public.

The inquiry found risk assessments by the CATE team had recently begun to properly factor in contextual risks to children.

“Furthermore, the close working that I accept currently exists between Safeguarding and CATE should serve to underline that CATE never again becomes – as it began – a substitute for a safeguarding response in CSE cases,” Crowther wrote.

The inquiry recommended that CATE practitioners and social workers undergo regular external training to provide “an up to date understanding of concepts of risk and harm” and the importance of rigorous information recording, which should be backed up by a regular audit.

‘We are fully committed to learning from the report’

A spokesperson for Telford and Wrekin Council said: “We are fully committed to learning from the report and acting on all of the recommendations it makes.

It added that two local CSE survivors, Holly Archer and Scarlett Jones, will play a “major part” in developing the action plan and ensuring victims’ and survivors’ voices are heard.

“One of the concerns survivors put forward in the report is the funding of the CATE team, the team of dedicated professionals who are at the forefront of our response to tackling child sexual exploitation, and who are commended throughout by the inquiry,” the spokesperson added. “The report proposes that the council ensures the team is properly funded for the next five years.  The council’s administration has committed to protecting that funding, not just for the next five years but for as long as they are running the council.”