Councils continue move away from ‘twin hat’ arrangements for roles of Director of Children’s Services and Director of Adult Social Services

The number of directors at local authorities who hold both statutory roles of Director of Director of Children’s Services and Director of Adult Social Services is at its lowest level since 2010.

In its 2022 update, which is based on membership data, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said there were only 22 ‘twin hat’ directors.

Steve Crocker, ADCS President, said: “Local authorities continue to combine and disaggregate services to meet local needs and since ADCS started recording DCS changes [in 2007] over two thirds (108 of 152) of local authorities have had a ‘twin hat’ director at some point.

“It is likely this picture will change as local authorities consider which arrangements are best for them. What remains important is that there is always a DCS in place who remains accountable for the outcomes for children’s outcomes locally.”

Crocker meanwhile said that as in previous years, ADCS had collected gender and ethnicity data from DCSs to better understand the characteristics and to provide greater visibility to diversity in the DCS community. It is currently undertaking an exercise gathering wider diversity data from across the entire membership.

“There remains not enough directors from Black and other ethnic backgrounds across the country, however, we know that leadership programmes within the sector are directly addressing this issue. It is vitally important that our workforce reflects our communities, a person’s ethnicity, gender or disability is irrelevant to their capability to do the job,” he added.

A total of 47 changes in DCS post-holder in 2021-22 was exactly in line with the average number of total changes ADCS said it would expect to see per-year.