Local government reorganisation proposals carry “material risks” for children and children’s services: ADCS

Observing that LGR is “not a neutral act for children”, ADCS called for any proposed disaggregation or amalgamation of children’s services to demonstrate how it will ensure “continuity of services and support for children, address and reduce inequalities and improve outcomes for children”.

In a paper published this week, the Association highlighted the following ways in which LGR could pose risks to children’s services:

• Leadership instability and inexperience: “the expertise of service, corporate and political leadership in relation to children’s services is critical to both the delivery of community level support as well as children’s safety, outcomes and experiences.”
• Workforce instability: “there is a risk of attrition plus recruitment and retention problems in key workforces, such as child and family social workers, plus the loss of specialist expertise in central corporate services (legal, finance, HR, estates) which may impact on practice quality and ultimately on children’s outcomes.”
• Impact on vulnerable children: “drift and delay in assessing and meeting children’s needs must be avoided as should breaks in social work supervision lines, difficulties or delays in migrating records to new case management systems, and disruption to corporate parenting responsibilities must be guarded against.”
• Unnecessary disruption of statutory duties: “disruption to safeguarding partnerships, corporate parenting, placement sufficiency for children in care, the SEND system and youth justice services. The sufficiency of high-quality early years provision and school place planning as well as admissions duties were similarly flagged by ADCS members.”
• Division of assets: “the delivery of children’s services requires a huge number of community assets; schools are the largest place-based assets by volume, in addition to youth and children’s centres, family hubs and children’s homes. The impact of greater levels of disaggregation risks new unitary authorities not being able to meet statutory sufficiency duties; it takes several years to fund, build and open new schools and children’s homes.”
• Financial risk: “smaller, disaggregated units of local government must be financially sustainable and able to withstand financial shocks e.g. rising costs of care placements or home to school transport. Limited financial sustainability and capacity can also hamper innovation and new ways of working. Loss of economies of scale in commissioning and disruption to joint commissioning arrangements; the dilution of sufficiency strategies for care placements; splitting legacy capital projects and debts, such as the high needs block overspend or Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debts are also flagged.”
• Overlapping reform programmes: “consideration must be given to the streamlining or join up of LGR with other reforms requiring wholescale changes to staffing structures and service delivery e.g. ongoing children’s social care and forthcoming SEND reforms.”
• Shared services and arrangements: “last year, MHCLG proposed the use of social care partnerships for service delivery on larger delivery footprints. This may underestimate the extent of relationship building that is needed to secure a shared understanding and direction of travel among participating authorities.”
• Inspection and improvement trajectories: “LGR has the potential to destabilise high performing children’s services, triggering re-inspection and performance decline.”

The Association warned that LGR can “fragment critical multi-agency safeguarding arrangements”, “destabilise high-performing services”, “disrupt safeguarding partnerships”, and delay improvement journeys if risks are not “rigorously assessed and addressed”.

In the absence of a “specific focus or improvement test” for children’s services in the LGR assessment framework used by government, the Association urged for consideration to be given to the following areas:

• Inspection outcomes
• Quality of children’s services practice (including outcomes for children)
• Workforce stability
• Local area partnership approach
• Financial sufficiency and sustainability
• Effectiveness of corporate support
• Effectiveness of political support.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been approached for comment.

Lottie Winson