Here’s the rub: the contracting landscape is skewed and totally misrepresented; there has never existed ‘a freedom of contract’ and at a sectoral level.

If the MAcAlister Review (also known as the Cavendish Initial Public Offering) is to work then the fallacy of the State and public sector provision catering for the most complex has to end. Commercial provision is and always been a niche market and works well this way.

Lumping together the apples and oranges, as has happened right across all vulnerable population services, through I’ll thought out and ill-suited public procurement processes must end too.

The regulatory requirements, and especially on respect to information management obligations, will never been satisfied, properly.

When I last reviewed this activity across a sub-region both social workers and senior contract officers were beside, and at logger-heads, with themselves ~ children suffered needlessly, providers exploit risks and Councils are forced into a buyer beware defensiveness; not least because the commercial proprietary often included the appointment of an out-going children services manager; it’s called market rigging by any other name.

Troubled and troubling children can smell a rat a mile away ~ let’s show them some respect and decency and end the arrogance which fuels their invalidation as children and future adults.

Children know far more than they can ever tell. Our collective responsibility must first and foremost be to offering the chance towards a truly free development of their expressions and not the mere beancounting of numbers in and out of care.

Thoughts…

And, let’s not forget that during the cash and data rich days of the noughties the money simply fell out of the bottom ~ instead of repairing the holes left by 17years of Thatcherism buying new buckets was logistically and operationally much easier ~ the population health of most inner cities and large council outer estates flatlined and continues to do so and while the 3rd Sector thrived ~ facing up to this legacy is crucial if social work is to remain an integral aspect of social protection over the life course….

Sadly I agree with David. I have given up the profession as the bureaucracy, processes and audits took a priority over practice quality. Thinking outside the box and meeting individuals needs was admired in the early days but now it’s a box filling exercise. There is a top heavy down approach and experienced social workers are not valued or used to share there skills with other workers. Staff are made to feel that they are inadequate and there’s often a ‘no challenge’ culture. The processes meet OFSTED requirements rather than that of the children and the main aim is to get a GOOD.

the 101 of management is to drive out fear not fuel it’s existence….(from Demings 14 pts of effective leadership and management btw The Deming Alliance are mighty powerful allies working throughout local government ~ ‘we’ are not alone as one thinks; asking for help is really hard, no?)

The issues are structural, cultural and personal ~ Neil Thompson became my go to read as his treatment of delivering anti-oppressive practice neatly matched the structure-conduct-performance model of competition (known as the Harvard School Model) throughout the noughties.

I have yet to meet a senior procurement professional and commercial sector thought leader who’d knowingly invite competitive rivalry into social services ~ there’s simply no evidence to say it works. Art Kleiner, CEO PwC alongside Gary Neilson and others conducted a study into the critical success factors of 870 organisations both public and private ~ the common factor was the a-void-dance of truth.

SW has friends in strange places ~ let them hear it’s voice it is afterall an international social work environment; the IFSW already know this ~ what say the IFSW?

All this does (and it’s the doing-in-socialwork that’s the loci of attention) require that the axioms of the professional training and practice that draw from phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry are recast, say, in Deleuzian terms ~ which is a project dear to the heart of many practitioners world wide and most notably Maria Nichterlien, a child and adolescent therapist Melbourne, Australia. The work of the Buzz Project, Harrogate is similarly minded. I am minded towards the sociology of which, which too is sorely neglected. Just saying is all…

That’s what is expected of you David. If in 2024 managers are resorting to Tayloristic bollix speaks volumes about the repeated failure of the information management requirements as a whole ~ and it is the holism that is failing and not for the first time; probation colleagues and NAPO had something to say and said it with good effect.

govtechsolutions (and there are others) can only ever be as good as the architectural design used ~ it’s called Enterprise Architecture and the demands of social work quite simply defies any and all known attempts to specify let alone roll out properly.

BASW knew this in 2007 by a unanimous show of hands at the AGM.

The bureaucratic burden increases, data input errors multiply and false pictures of ‘need’ are created (known as ontic quales).

Social Work remains the profession, and has exemptions within the DPA, to seek and correct information held that is wrong or damaging to it’s recipients. And, not least because of the increased incident of wrongful data coding within primary care solely to meet with financial requirements, political whim, or prove market position to equity shareholders our ability to act is required more now than ever.

Incidentally, this is known as muda, muri, and mura in performance management speak and it pays-off to have
some knowledge of how this stuff is meant to work ~ knowing the difference between Kaizen and, say, having requisite variety and a viable systems model is actually a requirement of senior management, right?

The onus of which rests solely with senior and executive management and elected members accountable to public scrutiny committees ensuring that they actually know how the money is spent and does what it is meant to do; it doesn’t because they don’t ~ it’s a dereliction of responsibility ….

Enough said, eh!

*it’s genuinely sad to read and hear of people leaving the profession this way ~ it is though a long game of attrition geared towards the removal of State liabilities and without a stopping mechanism*