Child protection reforms "more urgent than ever", says LGA

Reforms to the child protection system are “more urgent than ever”, the Local Government Association has said after research showed councils still face continuing staffing problems.

In the annual Local Government Workforce Survey, more than four in five councils (85%) reported difficulties in retaining children’s social workers. This is comfortably higher than other areas of employment.

The 2010 survey also revealed that nearly eight out of ten local authorities have trouble recruiting children’s social workers.

The LGA warned that 27% cuts to local government finances as well as the higher demand for child protection work since the baby Peter Connelly case would “pose very difficult questions for councils over how they can keep children safe”.

The association has campaigned for reforms to lighten the bureaucratic load on social workers. It said one of its recommendations had been accepted but others had not yet been implemented. These include:

• All professions recording information in the same way, using the Common Assessment Framework. This would reduce time cross-referencing information, the LGA argued
• An increase in the part played by other bodies, such as the police and health services, in making decisions about a child’s needs
• A reduction in the guidance for child protection, from 300 pages to a target of 100 pages.

Baroness Shireen Ritchie, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, said: “Protecting vulnerable children from neglect or abuse is one of the most important things that councils do. Frontline social workers save lives, and change lives for the better. They are part of the solution, not the problem.

“There has been a leap in the number of families coming to the attention of social services in the past few years. The priority for all social work teams is to do everything within their power to keep every child safe from harm, and that work continues tirelessly every single day.”

Ritchie warned that red tape and bureaucracy keeps social workers away from dealing face-to-face with struggling families and children in need of help.

She added that “a few simple steps” could reduce form-filling and ensure other organisations step up to the mark. This would make a massive difference, Ritchie argued, but work to address the problems was not taking place fast enough.