What should we do with the wealth of information and recommendations for change?

Separating the wheat from the chaff

The problem for the uninitiated is that the information network is packed with blogs and responses without any quality control, hence every item seems to carry equal status. This makes it hard to separate the authoritative from ‘tea-and-biscuits’ chatter. However, some reports stand head and shoulders above the rest. For example, in their 2018 report for the Department for Education, Foster care in England, Narey and Owers made 36 recommendations for improvement and in 2021, The Fostering Network’s State of the nation report specified six changes that would reduce pressure on the service. In the same year, the retiring Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, called on the government to cease compartmentalising problems and instigate coordinating policies (Longfield, 2021) and expressed a need for a systemic review of the whole caboodle when she described the children’s social care system in England as ‘unfit for purpose, often putting vulnerable teenagers in greater danger’ (Commission on Young Lives, 2021). A similar plea for a broad perspective had come a year earlier from the Child Welfare Inequalities Project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which argued that impairments to children’s development could only be effectively tackled by reducing inequalities in British society (Bywaters et al., 2020).

McAllister’s review of children’s social care

Then in May this year, an even more extensive review of children’s services appeared, namely Josh McAllister’s Independent review of children’s social care: Final report, described as ‘A once in a generation opportunity to transform the children’s social care system and provide children with loving, safe and stable families’ (McAllister, 2022). This looks at every aspect of services, makes trenchant criticisms and offers numerous proposals for improvement. These cover six areas:

philosophy: changing the culture; creating a sense of direction; reducing numbers in care; making services less remote, less stuck in crisis mode and less disconnected from clients; embracing ‘love’; and rejecting profit motives;

Firebrands advocating demolition and rebuilding will almost certainly be disappointed with these recommendations as they will be seen as more likely to prop up a crumbling edifice than to make a quantum leap. But even those who welcome McAllister’s suggestions will be haunted by the prospect of his proposals petering out or being watered down, as has happened to many that have gone before.

The barriers to reform

In the editorial for the December 2021 edition of the journal, I offered an explanation of why welfare reforms are so difficult to implement when the need is so obvious (Bullock, 2021). I argued that the barriers are more complicated than political inertia and suggested that the worldwide moves to roll back the state and stress individual responsibility devalue things like relational social work and structural explanations of poverty. Thus, children’s centres and Sure Start activities have been allowed to dwindle without this being an official policy and despite evidence of their value.

A problem with developmental models based on a ‘list of reforms’ is the risk of disconnection, with proposals in one area contradicting those in others. As I write this, candidates for the Tory leadership are presenting their manifestos with nearly all saying they will cut taxes and improve public services. But, if they want the latter, should they not be suggesting tax rises? Of course, while fragmentation, specialisation and silo-working are inevitable in a complex service network, interventions still need to be complementary. What we don’t want is disjointed thinking where governments show commitment to a specific area, such as child protection, when interventions in that area mostly comprise family support that has been decimated.

The cacophony of individual views

Further complications to the reform process arise from the effect of the emphasis on individualism on decision-making as so many views have to be considered and modern technologies allow their instant expression. Royal Commissions used to take ages to reach conclusions, and their publication was slowed by laborious typesetting and sale outlets restricted to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO). Thirty-four years ago, I remember standing in a crowded HMSO with some 30 others from regional social services awaiting the hour when the Cleveland Report could be released. Today, it would be on the internet in seconds, with responses articulating every possible view soon posted. This situation makes public figures so anxious not to upset anyone that they tend to restrict their statements to general platitudes of goodwill.

Indeed, it is often remarked that the current cabinet members seem superficial compared with the intellectual giants of the past, but this may reflect the increasing complexity of their task rather than their diminishing IQs. One of my parents’ heroes was Lord Woolton who, in the Second World War, created the national diet and delivered it fairly via rationing. In those days, nearly all families lived on simple foods, so it was not difficult to impose a diet of basics like bread and potatoes on a conciliatory population. But imagine trying to do that today – it would have to satisfy vegans, people with allergies, religious groups, etc.

The challenge of translating recommendations into policy

Even simple recommendations that would once have gained ready acceptance are now likely to be riddled with all kinds of tensions. Take, for example, McAllister’s recommendation to create secure schools for serious young offenders. Is this recreating the approved/reform schools and reviving the issues that led to their closure in the 1970s? Is it just replacing one group of institutions with a set of more benign others? Or is it part of an extensive de-institutionalisation programme, such as occurred in mental health, youth justice and residential childcare half a century ago? Perhaps it is enough at this stage to set the ball rolling, but the big problems lie ahead.

If these reports are to avoid being ‘little other than a redtape talking-machine, and unhappy bag of parliamentary eloquence’, ² there is a huge further task for a respected figure to analyse them, identify similarities and differences, assess the evidence and incorporate the common conclusions into a comprehensive child welfare policy. In short, the recommendations need to be ‘Beveridgised’: that is, coordinated into a coherent children’s service that convinces the powers that be of its legitimacy and feasibility. ³

Great opportunities abound with public sympathy, a philosophy embedded in Every Child Matters, the Children Act 1989 and new government and non-governmental organisations’ initiatives. But the risks of their fizzling out and submergence under a plethora of uncoordinated suggestions are ever present.