It certainly feels and appears that way.

Ethics Out Of Economics, Right?

See John Broome for CPD

‘Services by one Authority are treated, as if, the services of another Authority’

Here the casm between health and social services are tested and fought over. Health Economics is a global business. Social Services for children are, now, and seemingly, having to follow suit.

Here’s the rub: Social Work is Mesoscopic. By it’s very nature it’s neither entirely macro neither is it entirely micro. Issues of incommensurability and indeterminacy can’t be weighed within a Health Driven agenda’s of QUALYs or DALYs. Except, that’s the way Health is heading and has been for a decade or more.

I first studied the emerging narrative of welfare economics 30 years ago in a little known Journal called Catalyst which provided the platform for, the late, Prof Alan Maynard on QUALYs. Fortune has it that his protégé Prof Karl Claxton at York University’s, Centre for Health Economics, an internationally renowned enterprise, is also known to me. I will be asking how the, now, DALYs and the complete reliance on digitisation will impact the s25 Agreements.

Luckily, for me, Bojan Radej and author of Complex Society: In the Middle of a Middle World has long been dissatisfied with such metric commensurabilities, is also known to me.

Let’s hope, eh! I was puzzled about how this Review had become so transactional in nature and narrative. Health is doing what it does best and is again riding rough shod over Local Government.

There was no democratic determination for regionalism. The, then, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister failed to secure the mandate to move in this direction in the noughties. Health bosses of successive Governments proceeded regardless ~ it’s not new beginning in the mid 1990s.

Brexit, and all the unfinished business in it’s wake, is Driven by the Digital Agenda for Health Economics, once within the EU and now with the US.

Erected Members, like SW as an institution, have got to, finally speak up and actually say something. Social Work, if valued in a democratic society has to use all and every means now available to it. Once seen as a balancing-feedback against the harshness, for some and repeatedly the same groups
of already outlasted peoples, OF competitive economic development.

Health Economics and Welfare Economics is huge business. Is this commensurate with our Code of Ethics, nationally and internationally.

For CPD: see Prof Karl Claxton at York University, Centre for Health Economics.

*disclaimer I know both Karl Claxton and Bojan Radej and I have twice tried to facilitate their meeting to thrash out the issues of incommensurability and Evaluation Methodology*

For Bojan Radej see http;//veronpress.com/book/1083 or catch him on medium and make direct contact.

I have literally just heard that my constituency MP.

He is sending the comments made here, and elsewhere in CC, and about the Childrens Care Review to the relevant DofE Minister for their attention and consideration.

We can always act as informed private individuals too.

If the construction of the consultation process is onerous or your views are cancelled out through aggregation.

You can do the same.

I have often wondered whether Social Work and social workers should carry a political restriction.

Thoughts….

See Complex Society: In the Middle of a Middle World by Bojan Radej and Mojca Golobic (2021), especially Ch 2, Aggregation Problems and pg 81 for ease of reference.

When there’s talk, as mentioned yesterday in CC about changing the leadership competencies of the DCS, one is really looking at the wider issues of Evaluation Methodology and the synthesis of learning and practice from this Review.

Social Work is Mesoscopic. Occupying the middle ground between macro-economic welfare of a City or Region and the microscopic welfare of individuals, families and communities.

So far a reliance on a dualistic either/or narratives feed a methodological reliance on Utilitarian Aggregation Trade-offs. These are clever calculations but they’re also reducible to purious notions of happiness increasingly driven by

Sure, this seems to communicate relational qualities but they’re measured against physical characteristics. Like did the child attend their Review, is there an Education Plan, etc etc.The LAC903 returns, which were in use and may have changed, are a typical of illustration of poor commensurability.

There’s an assumption of commensurability as a precondition of contracting when one may not exist. Worse than this a child’s participation, especially in OAPs becomes susceptible to bribery or ‘pizza pleasure’.

It’s wrong.

Contracts for any services require a fundamental freedom of contract. An offer and acceptance within a deterministic structure. They are logical. They are prescriptive.

Of the 27 Councils contracting staff involved in my review ALL were at a lose knowing they’d been placed, right from the off, in a buyer-beware scenario.

These are some of the issues. Tackling them means getting our head around the incommensurability of values and having an Evaluation Methodology in Social Work that is fit for purpose.

The book mentioned above is dense reading but well worth the effort.

The actual history of the, say, North West and North East Providers is pretty damn shakey. The early studies into the commissioning and contracting of the first 3 pilots of RCCs were fabrications, almost works of fiction. They couldn’t be anything else because the basic data needed to make any consideration of their viability simply wasn’t available. Council workers, both social workers and contract staff fearful of going on record. The two other authors wrote what they were ‘contracted’ to say. BASW and Oxford Brookes University know this as their, then, Officers were one and the same people.

The similarity with NHS Providers will be the enormity of energy and money these ‘economic entities’ soak up. Absorbing more than money, detracting value through needless duplication of existing statutory duties held by Councils until they become the de facto provider

If the Children Act and LASSA, in all their incarnations, are unworkable then let’s say so and ask, why? If Councils don’t want the responsibilities and some CEOs don’t let’s say so.

The language of Framework Agreements sounds as though someone actually knows what they mean let alone do. Borrowing words from high end procurement procedure that historically are only ever used in name only simply isn’t good enough.

There’s no evidence to say what they actually do other than create a standing list of accredited providers. Which is a pretty basic requirement if truth is known.

The idea’s are seated on utilitarian idea’s of economic preference and gains through economies of scale. The correct understanding of any Framework Agreements first requires a standardisation of what is to be framed; these are called Category Sourcing Programmes. Having framed the service standards one must then apply the principle of transitivity. Transivity means that an increase in investment in a problem specific area adds to the overall uplifting of well-being for the population as a whole. It’s called being ‘betterthan’. (For cpd see Ethics Out of Economics and Weighing Lives by John Broome)

Crucially, these basic requirements only work in area’s of ‘extreme commensurability’ like the substitution of smoking cigarettes with vaping. They are designed for area’s of public health management, using behavioural economic strategies, like Nudge, to secure the overall direction and intent of public policy. They are longrun projects with a contract and procurement life cycle of at least 10-15 years. Any procurement process proper beginning with complete industry buy-in from all major stakeholders.

Oxford Brookes University has repeatedly failed to learn these,and rather basic, understandings of what ‘commissioning’ actually means. Instead, an institutional illiteracy has perpetuated ‘commissioning myths’. The early ventures in this area with the, then, National Treatment Agency, which also includes passing-off work accredited to, and by, the University which wasn’t theirs to do so, was about public health management.

There’s a world of difference between the likes of Sir Martin Narey and The Boston Consulting Group, knowing they can getting away with getting it wrong, and largely because Government Policy provides the administration shield against litigation, which includes Corporate Manslaughter. The DofE hasn’t secured the consent and consensus needed for such seismic changes. Proceeding with anything less makes the ‘Commissioning’ ideological. As such it makes a non-sense of policy intent, reducing Governments initiative to State sponsored advertising. Children deserve much, much better.

Commissioning, as a bespoke economic activity, if done seriously requires a rathermore deliberate focus and be crafted in terms that communicate the special specificalities of the activities as a procurement procedure in it’s own right. This ain’t rocket science. Councils, for reasons of their retained responsibility, as individual Contracting Authority’s at the level of each individual child already know this. Anything, that undermines this, like, the Information Management Requirements, must be sorted out in detail before the prevailing illiteracy becomes fully institutionally normalised.

There’s much more nuanced work to be done.