Cash-starved children’s care plan ‘a route map to failure’
Think tank says ministers’ pledge falling short due to lack of funds
FLAGSHIP plans to revolutionise the care of children in Scotland is setting a route map to failure due to being starved of sufficient investment to make it work, an influential think tank has warned.
The Scottish Government’s The Promise aims to create a better deal for children and young people to prevent them from needing local authority care.
It is a 10-year programme that will run until 2030 to implement action points in last year’s Independent Care Review aimed at tackling a “fractured, bureaucratic and unfeeling” care system, in which young people’s voices are not sufficiently heard or valued.
But think tank the Common Weal, which studied the plans through its care working group, has said that “substantial and significant investment” in public services is needed to make it work, pointing out social services departments have faced increasing demands in the face of declining investment.
In a damning overview of the way forward for child protection, it says poor outcomes for those in care was the result of “inadequate investment in social welfare across the board, not specifically the experience of out-of-home care”.
And Scotland’s largest local government trade union Unison has also warned that while The Promise presents an opportunity to address the “crisis” of underfunding in both children’s and adult services, the change programme “tries to body swerve the question of funding by focusing on service design and structural reform”.
It has called on union branches to “keep on making the case for proper investment in services”.
The Common Weal’s analysis of The Promise is critical of a failure to recognise the role already played by social work staff in reducing risks in families to avoid admission to care.
Social work caseloads for those working with children and their families frequently comprise more than 40 cases, and the analysis said that the workload often precluded the “kind of connection with children and their families that enables respect, trust and
honesty”. “It is disingenuous to suggest that this can be addressed in any way other than by allowing social workers the space and time to make these meaningful relationships. Adding more compulsory requirements to an already hard-pressed workforce will make things worse, not better,” Common Weal said.
“Positive change for people who have experience of care is achievable, but only if the right choices are made and the resources needed committed to.
“The Promise may have worthy intentions but it offers few imaginative or sufficiently far-reaching ideas to achieve the fundamental realignment to which it aspires. A road map without a clear direction of travel, that underestimates the distance to be travelled and that overlooks obstacles to be overcome along the route is, unfortunately, likely to lead to the wrong destination.”
Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament after the review was published that it was “one of the most important moments in my tenure as First Minister so far”.
One of the many key elements was the creation of an independent oversight body “with at least 50 per cent of its members being care experienced, including its chair”.
An arms-length company called The Promise was created by ministers in March to oversee the implementation and deliver changes by local authorities, the third sector, the regulatory bodies, and other key agencies.
The Promise has been supported with £4 million of public money in the last financial year to help organisations adapt to cultural shifts and collaboration across the across the care system. The closing date for the scheme was in March and it was expected to be extended.
Amanda Burgauer, interim director of Common Weal, said: “The Promise wants the very best for kids who need care services and so do we all. But the reality is that this needs resources, not sentiment, and the investment simply isn’t matching the sentiment.”
Common Weal argues outcomes for many would have been much worse if children had not been placed in care and that it is “largely lack of investment”, rather than lack of awareness or commitment, that has inhibited progress.
“Local authorities and the social work staff they employ do not remove children from home for no reason. Both legislation and resource availability dictate so.”
The analysis said the review attempted to steer a “rather uncomfortable and contradictory path” between advocating more intervention on the one hand, while on the other criticising public services for an intrusive involvement.
It also criticised the review’s conclusions, saying that objective evidence “seems to have been jettisoned in favour of ‘listening’ and ‘voices’ prioritised over knowledge”.
The think tank said that for The Promise to work, the balance of time spent in meetings and on administration rather than on faceto-face contact “has to change”.
Established as a “radical blueprint” for improving the lives of care-experienced children and young people in Scotland, the Independent Care Review took in the views of 5,500 people from across the care system, including 2,500 youngsters with lived experience in care.
Among the calls to action was one for the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Social Services Council to come together with other regulators to “create a new, holistic framework that values what children and families value”.
The review recommended that Scotland should move towards early intervention and prevention services, and that “acute and crisis care services must be phased out”.
It stated that Scotland should create “a clear legislative enabling environment that supports families to stay together and protects and allows relationships to flourish”, with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to be used as the “bedrock upon which legislation is based”.
The Scottish Government was approached for comment.