Munro is specifically recommending:
• Simplification of Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010) and The Framework for Assessment of Children in Need and their families (2000) so that they are reduced to the key principles and requirements underpinning the guidance. Munro states that professionals need to be given “responsibility for how to implement the principles in practice.” - see Munro report paragraph 3.11.
• Removal of the distinction between the initial and core assessments and the timescales associated with these. (Munro is recommending that there is a new simplified National Performance indicator set. She is suggesting that timescales in this area should now be measured by the “Average number of working days taken to decide whether a child is ‘in need’ and offer to help from the point of contact/referral” so that the CIN Census “Provides an indication of how quickly the assessment and provision need takes place, without setting a target number of days.” – see Munro report Appendix B).
• Local responsibility to draw on research and theoretical models and to use these in the design of local recording formats
• Removing a prescribed approach to IT systems and recording formats

Munro has suggested that IT systems supporting social work practice will need to “be able to adapt with relative ease to changes in local needs” – see Munro report, paragraph 7.17.

Munro states that “With the reduction of prescription, leaders in local authorities will have more autonomy but also more responsibility for helping their staff to operate with a high level of knowledge and skills” – see Munro report paragraph 13.

The freeing up of local recording practice and discretion as recommended by Munro is likely to receive a favourable response from front line social work practice as, in effect, she is suggesting a complete rethink of the approach to recording and system implementation that surrounded the implementation of the Integrated Children System. Further updates will be given in the light of the Government response to the Munro recommendations.

Some of the things that are occupying my mind are around how each Local Authority senior and political teams will implement Munro in a way that will support this call to professionals to exercise their judgement.  De-coupling the inspection regime from the workflow that currently feeds it, counting the things that matter instead of the things that are easy to count and finding ways to assure accountability without tying the workers into elaborate reporting regimes will be the operational challenge.

I have been asking social workers to think about what they would want to be renummerated for doing and how they would evidence the quality of those actions.  Many times we end up with a list of relational behaviours that matter to both the child/young person and their families and the workers involved with them.  Understanding how best to link these 'critical skills' ( captured well by the social work taskforces work on standards) to an sound evidence base that can support the management of individuals and the organisation and continue to improve service delivery is the challenge we all need to be thinking upon. 

Operationalising Munro asks us to look outside the systems we are in and imagine a place where social workers and managers believed each other to be competent, where partner agencies respected each others roles and work, and where children and family believed that being involved with children's services meant that they had the chance of a better life. 

I look forward to the challenge.

I am wondering about the timetable for change.  It is clear from the report that a lot of the concerns that social workers, managers and children social care organisations have been raising for the last five years, have been heard, understood and placed within a useful context.  Munro is not a simplistic thinker and therefore the great complex loops that bind the system together are well identified.  These include legislative, performance and audit, organisational infrastructure and social work skills hurdles - none of which can be overcome easily.  Having said that - they are all fixable.  The 'wicked' problems centred around the skills of the people managing the sequencing of the fixes, the resources and time allowed for each fix, and how to keep the focus on vulnerable children and their families whilst doing so.  The other 'wicked' problem touched on by Munro was that of working with the media to assist the public to understand the profession and what to expect in terms of proportional and reasoned responses to child deaths.

This profound cultural change to a more confident, highly qualified and professional work force, proud of their status and their learning and skills is welcome.  The journey needs to be laid out clearly, even if a thousand schools of thought are to be allowed to bloom, so that children do not become the last in line beneficiaries of this new world.

Download the Munro report here.

It made interesting reading and I have always enjoyed reading Munro's work as she presents complex ideas with elegant prose and an reasoned manner that seem to suggest change is achievable.

However, for Local Authority leaders, and social workers and front line managers, I think it will continue to beg the question - what can change? It is one thing to identify that perfomance indicators, forms, processes and IT have come together to create the 'perfect storm' - it is another to empower the Local Authorities, who remain bound by the legislation that states the Assessment Framework must be used to assess children and their families in need, by the inspection regime that measures performance in timescales, process and quantity rather than quality outcomes, and statutory guidance that states which records should be used to record actions to safeguard children, to make the changes necessary.

Centrally, undoing legislation and all its ties, including the Public Law Outline, and the Common Assesment (which is based on the Assessment Framework) to name a few,  scrutinising and changing the performance Indicators and the management information schedules that are required by the DFE each year, the inspection regimes that are based on these PI's, and the records that are used to gather the information and assess in accordance with all of the above mentioned, will take time.  It took ten years to create.  A system that may seem when examined critically to be piece meal, but when it comes to pulling it apart, will seem inter dependant and tightly tied together.

Central changes hit the Local Authorities rather slowly really - rippling out and not always making it to shore first time round.  If the system really is as broken as all the media reports and the government indicates then it will be crucial for Munro to get her 'tipping point' right.

Report

The London borough is among the 12 projects helping the government to examine what sort of support and structures will best lead to long-term employee-led ‘mutuals’, as part of the wider big society agenda. 

Full article here

The report's key findings:

• The extent to which organisations such as youth offending teams, schools and colleges could work successfully with young people in secure settings was severely limited by the insufficient number and range of appropriate secure placements.
• Work between professionals and the families of young people who were sentenced or remanded by a court was very limited until the placement had been made.
• All the secure establishments visited engaged themselves with other agencies very quickly and effectively once a young person was admitted.
• Many young people were placed a long distance from their home, and some parents had to make journeys of hundreds of miles to visit their children.
• These young people were unlikely to have the same level of support as those who were placed locally, on either admission or discharge from the secure setting. This adversely affected plans for successful transfer and reintegration into the community.
• Secure establishments used assessment, planning and review effectively, which included involving other organisations as well as the young people and their families.
• Young people generally received good emotional support, and the relationships between young people, their families and staff within the secure establishments were very positive.
• It was common for agreed discharge arrangements for young people not to be in place until the last days of the placement.
• Social workers and workers from youth offending teams did not participate sufficiently in planning for young people to move back into the community.
• Staff in secure placements were usually unable to make significant continuing contributions to planning or services for young people after they were discharged.

Recommendations

The Youth Justice Board should:

- review the range, number and location of secure placements within the estate to ensure that young people:

• are placed as close as is practicably possible to their home
• maintain contact with their families
• have appropriate vocational and work experiences
• have continuity of care before, during and after admission

- involve and consult the appropriate youth offending teams, secure establishments, social workers and the families about the most appropriate placement of young people sentenced or on remand
- consider the cost implications of placing young people a long distance from their homes and seek to achieve better value for money.

Local authorities responsible for placing children and young people within the secure estate should:
- wherever possible, seek to involve parents and families in decision-making when young people are to be placed on a ‘welfare’ order and give due regard to their opinions
- ensure that young people who are entitled to support under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 receive the services they require during their placement within a secure establishment
- ensure that young people moving out of secure settings have a guaranteed education or training place arranged for them
- ensure that firm discharge plans, based on the assessed need of the individual young person, are in place sufficiently early to enable transitional work with any new placement or facilities.

Secure establishments should:
- consider, at all reviews, how young people may be supported throughout their placement and during the immediate period following their discharge to home or to another placement
- ensure that each child or young person placed in a secure setting is allocated a named worker to provide personal support throughout their placement and during the period of transition.

Admission and discharge from secure accommodation report

BBC summary

Vulnerable children are being ‘damaged’ by delays in care proceedings in England and Wales, according to the children’s charity Barnardo’s.  Barnardo's wants to see a 30-week limit after figures showed children waited an average of 57 weeks - sometimes in abusive homes - for county courts to make care or supervision orders.

Court data shows that at the end of 2009 there were 50 per cent more unresolved care proceedings cases than at the end of 2008. According to the The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) in England new applications account for less than half of this increase, indicating that the courts are taking longer to close a significant number of cases.

Press release

Within two months of the switch-off all the data collected for the system is to be destroyed, although the information will still remain in the social services, education and health departments it had been gathered from.

Ministerial statement

Bursting at the seams

Fostering services interviewed for the report said it was becoming increasingly difficult to find the right home for every child.  

In some cases foster carers had literally no beds left and fostering services were unable to recruit enough new foster families to keep up with demand.  Some fostering services reported being worried about their capacity to cope for much longer.

Press release

Report

However the British Association of Social Workers branded the suggestion ‘too simplistic’.

Unison press release

BASW press release

The deadline for submissions is 24 September 2010.

Consultation

Safeguarding and looked after children: national results for children’s social work practitioners survey 2010

This 2010 survey on safeguarding and looked after children paints the national picture of social work practitioners’ views for the first time.

There were positive responses on training and levels of line management support received by social work practitioners.

However many social workers felt they did not have enough time available to them to work as effectively as they would like with the children and young people on their workload. Suggested solutions included increased staffing and more effective caseload management.

Generally, social work practitioners did not feel encouraged to suggest improvements or to have a say in the running of the service.

It appears that many local authorities find it a challenge to communicate the relevant issues raised in serious case reviews and policy and procedure updates.

Many respondents felt that induction programmes had not been effective in preparing individuals for their role.

Finally, there were issues about internal communication and information sharing, as well as between local authorities and partners.

Report

The review is looking particularly at the powers, remit and functions of the Children's Commissioner, how this role relates to other functions supported by Government and value for money.  

The deadline for submissions is 4 October 2010.

Consultation

Speech transcript

Average real cut of government spending by 25%

NHS spending protected

Reduction in tax credit eligibility for families earning over £40 000

Child benefit frozen for three years from April 2011

Health in pregnancy grant cut from January 2011

From 2011-12 lone parents whose youngest child is over the age of 5 will be required to work

Kirklees Safeguarding Children Board serious case reviews
British Association of Social Workers response

Prof Munro, from the London School of Economics, will examine ways of cutting bureaucracy to give social workers more time with children.  She will also consider ways of improving links between social workers and other agencies like the police.

Members of the review panel include:

• Professor Sue White, University of Lancaster and former member of the Social Work Task Force
• District Judge Nicholas Crichton of the Inner Family Proceedings Court
• Marion Davis, President of the Association of Director’s of Children’s Services
• Daniel Defoe, a care leaver and member of Newham’s Care Council
• Melanie Adegbite, a self employed social worker
• Avril Head, Foster Carer who has fostered over 130 children in 25 years
• Martin Narey, Barnardo's outgoing Chief Executive

Tim Loughton has also written to all chairs of local safeguarding children boards, and directors of children's services to confirm that the overview report and the executive summary of all new serious case reviews initiated from now onwards should be published.

BASW response

In its submission to the Review, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) said: ‘Social workers must be supported and empowered by both the state and society to do the job that they have been trained for, rather than be defeated by the gross inadequacies that are plaguing the current system.’

In its submission, BASW calls for:

• better alliances between practitioners, parents, carers and the general public
• a sustained campaign of public information about child abuse and the role of social work
• the assessment framework to be overhauled Social workers to have more direct work with service users

BASW’s submission concludes that there needs to be a career structure which rewards and supports social workers to remain in front-line practice.  It says there should be a new child protection system that values the profession which must be backed by a College of Social Work,
led by and accountable to the profession with a compelling influence upon standards of training, continuing professional development and the employment of social workers.

Department for Education press release
BASW submission to the Review

For those of us who have been working hard, both at implementing policy and legislation, and at managing the impact of those changes on both the front line workers and the children and families they serve, there must be a sense of frustration.  I had worked with the Social Work Taskforce expert panel last year on ICS simplification and had picked up a sense from the participants that there might be a corner to be turned. Local Authorities I had been working with were finding ways forward in a climate that meant they often had a rising referral rate, with the same, or a lessening amount of resources. I did not see evidence of giving up but people on the front line were seeming tired.  Tired of change and tired of being asked to do what they perceived to be a too difficult job with little tangible evidence of good impact on children and their families.  Not all of them, but enough of them to be noticeable.

To pin my colours to the mast, I believe in evidence based practice and outcome focused results.  I think that we should not intervene in the lives of children and their families unless we are sure we can contribute positively to the well being of the child.  This means we need a framework to understand how to make sense of the complexity of information that is presented to us at each turn.

But I also believe in striving to do things better each day.  So for now I am going to refuse to be anxious.  I am going to resist the invitation to run around and say the sky is falling in.  I am going to resist change fatigue and instead say, we all knew that we could not continue on as we were - that is what the social work taskforce was all about.  So lets look forward to what might come next.

Here at Child Centred Practice, we are investing more in our change management skills and in supporting Local Authorities to continue to deliver excellence services to vulnerable children and young people in the midst of change.

We are going to keep abreast of all the current issues that impact on vulnerable children and young people and adjust our service delivery accordingly, aiming for excellent outcomes for children.   I was at a seminar the other day and someone wrote on the feedback sheet "Jo Fox is always enthusiastic and that enthusiasm is catching".  The truth is that I do have to work at being positive and I am glad it is catching. If ever a service needed to play "the glad game", it is ours. 

Child Centred Practice would like to congratulate Hartlepool Children's Services on their outstanding Ofsted results.  Having worked closely with their social workers and managers over the past two years we are aware of the effort they put into getting things right for children.   Well done. Read more.

New guidance on the integrated children's system has been issued by the DCSF.

The guidance has been developed to address the most important issues identified by users of ICS and has been largely based on the input from attendees at the stakeholder conferences in August and September 2009, and from the Expert Panel. It is specifically designed to support local authority directors of children’s services and senior management in making decisions about the future of their local systems and how they can be improved.  

Jo Fox, principal of Child centred Practice, worked with the DCSF to create part of this guidance.

John Harris, director of children, schools and families at Hertfordshire County Council, said: "The tragic death of Baby Peter in Haringey, which occurred despite regular involvement from social workers, has shown that those involved in child protection must be highly skilled at perceiving the risks that may surround each child they visit.
"One of the key recommendations of Lord Laming's report is that newly qualified social workers should have guaranteed support and supervision during their first year.  I feel strongly that the academy model is the best way to deliver that."

In The Protection of Children in England: a Progress Report, Laming wrote:  "Social workers must have guaranteed support and supervision during their first year to develop their skills and confidence as a professional in a relatively safe learning environment while still having exposure to children in complex and difficult circumstances."


By Charlotte Goddard
Children & Young People Now
2 October 2009

The Social Work Task Force was set up by the Government to undertake a comprehensive review of frontline social work practice and to make recommendations for improvement and reform of the whole profession, across adult and children's services.

This report sets out interim advice to the Government about the state of social work in England at present, and the nature and content of the comprehensive reform programme needed.

The advice in this report is based on an extensive programme of consultation and evidence gathering over the past six months, as well as the shared expertise of Task Force members (Full details of the evidence gathering work to date can be found at Annex A). The Task Force is supported by a Practitioners Reference Group and a Key Partners Group.

It is very important that this document is read and understood by everyone within the discipline.  Click  here to download the document.

The Protection of Children in England: action plan - The Government’s response to Lord Laming.  This document sets out the Government’s detailed response to Lord Laming’s report and the plan of action to deliver the step change which he has called for.

Ownership of ICS needs to be passed from central government to local authorities for the system to fulfil its objectives and protect children from harm, according to council delegates at a conference hosted by ICS supplier Liquidlogic earlier this month.

“It is time for local authorities to take ownership of the policy agenda and define what the end product will look like,” said Islington Council’s ICS project manager for children’s services, Tim Parkin.

“The difficulties now are not with the system but how it is managed at a local level.” Jo Fox, a consultant who advises local authorities on the Every Child Matters agenda, said the main issue is that social workers are unused to the new electronic way of working and feel the system is slowing them down.

Rather than using the software as the helpful tool it was first intended to be, social workers consider filling in each record to be an administrative burden, she said. Part of the problem is that practitioners feel constrained by technology. “At the moment the systems are too prescriptive and many social workers feel under pressure to tick every box,” said Fox. “Imagine what this will feel like for the less vulnerable children.”

An anonymous delegate from Dorchester Council, said the emphasis on the project is wrong. “We do not have a pen and paper department so why is this being managed by IT? Practitioners and processes should come first,” she said.

Islington’s Parkin said the problem is “a challenge for all of us to bring technology and people together.” He advised creating multi-disciplinary teams of practitioners and IT professionals to ensure procedures are stable. “We need to get to the point where every child has a well structured and well written plan, informed by a good quality assessment,” said Parkin.

London Borough of Hillingdon’s ICS project manager, Chris Chaplin, said the council had designed its ESCR system with ease of use in mind.“It had to be something staff enjoyed using, that they were comfortable with and that met all their needs,” he said. But even though the implementation of the ICS system had been a success, Chaplin said there were still vital aspects missing. “Social workers like diagrams when doing assessments and there are no in-built drawing facilities,” he said. 

Written by Rosalie Marshall, Computing, 30 Oct 2008