Oral evidence: Social work reform, HC 690Wednesday 23 March 2016

Oral evidence, 23 March 2016.

Witnesses

Marion Russell, Principal Child and Families Social Worker, Cornwall Council, Dr Sam Royston, Director of Research and Policy, The Children’s Society, Peter Watt, National Services Director, NSPCC, and Paul Moffat, Chief Executive, Doncaster Independent Children’s Trust, gave evidence.

Chair

Good morning and welcome to our inquiry. You know that we are basically looking at the Government reform programme and seeing if it is sufficient in terms of structure, people and outputs and so on, so I am not going to repeat that in any detail. I would like you to briefly say what you are representing and what you do, and then we will get straight on with the questions. Paul, would you like to start?

Paul Moffat

I am Paul Moffat. I am the Chief Executive of Doncaster Children’s Services Trust. If I may, there was a factual inaccuracy in what was said in the last round of witness evidence, so I am wondering if I will get a chance to clarify that inaccuracy?

Chair

Yes, you will get a chance to clarify it. I will let you do that.

Dr Royston

I am Sam Royston. I am Director of Policy and Research at The Children’s Society, which is a national children’s charity.

Marion Russell

I am Marion Russell. I am Principal Child and Family Social Worker for Cornwall. I am here representing Cornwall and our written submission, but I was also the first principal child and family social worker appointed in England and helped set up and chaired the national network until July of last year.

Chair

Congratulations on all of that.

Peter Watt

I am Peter Watt. I am the National Services Director at the NSPCC.

Chair

Paul, would you like to make your clarification?

Paul Moffat

Just in response to Professor Jones’s comment about Ofsted’s findings at the recent inspection of Doncaster, they did find improvement. They did not change the overall judgment, but looked-after services were all “requires improvement” or “good”. Even help and protection they described as improving compared to where it had been previously, and there was confidence in the leadership and the management going forward. Thank you.

Chair

Thank you very much. Straight on with Ian, who is going to ask a few questions about who should run the services.

Ian Mearns

If you were in the room—and I know a number of you were—our last panel was heavily dominated by people from a local authority background, as am I by the way. Who should run statutory children’s services and to what extent should we be looking at new models of service delivery?

Dr Royston

As a charity provider, that may be targeted at Peter and me. The first thing is that The Children’s Society very strongly approves of innovation in children’s social work. We think reform is absolutely crucial, perhaps now more than ever. But one of the challenges is that there is a particular need for innovation to be delivered in the context of developing better practice, rather than in the context of burning platforms where change is necessary. There can be real risks in reforming and particularly in changing the delivery of statutory children’s services in response to reductions in funding for social care. That presents real risks. I think the voluntary sector has an absolutely crucial role to play in the reform of social care services. In taking on additional statutory responsibilities, or responsibilities for the delivery of statutory services, there are some risks to additional delivery from the voluntary sector. In particular, we are very proud of our independent role and our ability to act as a critical friend to local authorities, and there could be some risks in the voluntary sector taking on a wider role with regard to that. In addition, a key part of what we do is providing independent advocacy to children directly, and in the context of the voluntary sector taking on more roles for the delivery of statutory children’s services, there would be a big question about would the voluntary sector be able to continue to do that? If so, how would that work? There are some real questions there.

Peter Watt

I would agree with that. The first thing to say from the NSPCC’s perspective is that if a local authority is failing—and I am sure we will talk a bit more about that later on—it is failing children and families who are very vulnerable and it is absolutely right that the Government take a stance and says, “We are not willing to tolerate that.” Asking some questions about what happens if a local authority does not improve in sufficient speed such that families are safer is absolutely the right question. From the NSPCC’s perspective, we would agree with Sam. We have been providing to and with local authorities almost since we were formed. The key thing we bring to the table is, first of all, independence and challenge, in the way that Sam described, and the second thing is innovation. We have the ability to innovate in terms of what works and develop evidence-based approaches that will be helpful to the local authority we are working with directly and to the wider sector as well. That is a unique place where we would want to be. From the NSPCC’s perspective, I do not think we would want to take on delivering the totality of statutory services in the local area, but we would want to continue to work as a partner delivering aspects of what a local authority delivers.

Paul Moffat

There are some excellent local authorities providing excellent children’s services. I have worked for over 27 years in local authorities, and I was a director of children’s services in one authority, one of only four in the country that achieved “outstanding” under the last inspection framework. We should recognise and celebrate that, but there are authorities that get into repeated failures, where there has been consistent failure and poor leadership over a number of years. Just repeating the same structures and the same models, in my view, is not necessarily the right way forward. There is a lot of expertise in the independent sector and in the private sector, and we should be looking at different models going forward that might act as a catalyst in a local area to bring about significant change. There is not one size fits all. We should look at the local need, the local context, and then determine what is the right model.

Marion Russell

Cornwall comes from a situation where we were in intervention. We had a very poor Ofsted report in 2009 and in 2011 and we have been in intervention. But what worked for us was absolutely clear leadership, but clear leadership that was local and with a commitment to Cornwall. That is what made all the difference. Having interim leaders and different people coming in did not work. We then had a leadership that had a clear strategic plan and that had the motivation and passion to bring everybody on board and stuck with Cornwall through what it had to do. I was here for the previous panel and listened to my colleagues there, and I would reiterate that in many authorities the structure and the people are already there. If you have a lead member who is committed to children, a director who has those skills and abilities and the other pieces are in place, then you can work towards that improvement. Restructuring, changing systems, creating more churn takes the eye off the ball and takes the focus away from what you are doing with children. Absolutely, that can be done in partnership with other colleagues who have that expertise, but it is not about separating it; it is bringing it all back together.

Ian Mearns

What we have seen though, for instance, the Government’s experience with schools is experiments have then led to wholescale change across the whole system, which is now being enacted. Do you think an academy-style system would be appropriate for children’s social care?

Marion Russell

Anything that adds a level of separation and takes governance and accountability away carries more risk. The people who have the governance and the accountability for what happens with children should hold that and that should be within the local authority.

Ian Mearns

Using the educational analogy again, in and around London, the Government have found it less difficult to get academy sponsorship, but outside in the provinces that has become more difficult. Do you think there are people out there who are ready and willing to take over the responsibility of being sponsors for an academy-style children’s services?

Paul Moffat

From my experience, I have not had a plethora of people knocking at my door to talk about sponsoring the trust. However, we have to think imaginatively about what we mean by sponsorship. I would agree with the comment earlier that this is about local accountability. You do not want a fragmented service and there is a risk that if you have too many providers you end up with the focus moving away from the child and it becomes about commissioning and structures rather than outcomes for children. But there is an opportunity there to think more creatively if there is going to be an acadamisation of social care. We have to think about who we want in the tent working with us on that. It has to be people that have a clear common purpose, a clear vision about what they want for children, and not be driven by profit or by finance.

Ian Mearns

Directly to the people from the voluntary sector, would your organisations want to take over the children’s service of Birmingham, for instance? You shook your head very quickly there, Sam, by the way.

Dr Royston

Maybe Birmingham is an interesting example. But we have no plans to knock on the door around running statutory children’s services at this point in time. As I say, I think that what each individual provider does is a question that it is going to have to address. The big questions for the voluntary sector are: first, are we the most appropriate kind of organisation to be delivering that kind of service; secondly, can we maintain that independent role, that critical friend role; can we continue to provide independent advocacy for children? Would our taking on responsibilities like that be putting children’s needs at the heart of what we are doing?

Ian Mearns

Before I bring Peter in, you raise an interesting question. Would you like to continue to be a critical friend to G4S running children’s services in Birmingham?

Dr Royston

What we are clear about is that we do not think that a for-profit company should be running statutory children’s services. We do not think that that it is right that the profit motive be the core driver of that. We welcome the changes to some of the original discussions about a year and a half ago on this that were a bit less clear about the role of for-profit organisations.

Peter Watt

We would not want to take on the running of the services in an area, be it in Birmingham or anywhere else. But there is a flipside to this as well, in two parts. One is that I do not think we should make the assumption that all of the best knowledge and skills about what works for children and families in a particular area sit within the local authority, because that is not always the case. That is why the role of the voluntary sector comes in. We have a particular set of skills and expertise that would be enormously helpful. Sometimes, these structural discussions almost become, “Put the walls around the local authority and then everyone else keep away because we know what’s best.” I do not think that is true. The second thing is that the NSPCC’s research is really clear on this, that for every one child that is known by statutory services in some shape or form, there are eight children who are being maltreated who are not known to the system. If we are going to genuinely create a system that protects all those children who are being maltreated, it will require not just local authority statutory services being excellent. It will require community services, communities, families, churches, institutions and so on also to play their role. That is an important consideration when we are talking about what works for children and vulnerable children and families; that it is not just statutory services now and it can’t be going forward.

Ian Mearns

Paul, do you think the model in Doncaster can be extended to all underperforming local authorities? How far have the trust structures helped you in your bid to secure improvement? One last little question is: do you think it is realistic for the Government to expect local authorities, or any other provider, to turn services around in six months if they are inadequate?

Paul Moffat

We just need to clarify that point. There is not an expectation that authorities turn a poor performing authority around within six months. There is an expectation that there is a clear action plan and there is confidence in the leadership and management, which I think is what Barbara alluded to earlier. That is the expectation; it is not expected that you go from “inadequate” to “requires improvement” within six months. Ofsted would say that, as would the Department for Education. The expectation with regard to the trust is that, within nine months, we clearly demonstrated that all of our looked-after services had gone from “inadequate” to at least “requires improvement” or “good”, if you just apply the Ofsted judgments. What is important to think about from Doncaster’s perspective is the morale of the staff. We had a very demoralised, partially demonised staff, and within a relatively short period of time we turned that around. We could have just said, “Right, we are going to get rid of all of those staff and start again,” but the timescales that were set for the contract is that we had to be in a much stronger position within 18 months. Starting with a new workforce and getting to that point would have just compounded the challenges that we already faced. What we did do, however, was invested a huge amount of time in practice improvement. We had good practitioners from the voluntary sector, from the statutory sector, sitting alongside what had previously been underperforming staff.

Chair

Can I ask a question? Do you think the model is transferrable to other areas where—

Paul Moffat

I was getting to that. In Doncaster, you can clearly see evidence of improvement and that has been found by Ofsted, by Department for Education officials who come in and by external regulators as well, so we have seen those improvements. As a model, I think it is working well within Doncaster and the evidence stacks up to support that. It is a model that could be applied elsewhere but I do not think it is a panacea; it is not something that could be applied in 152 authorities. It goes back to what I said in the beginning: it depends on the local need, the history and the repeated failure. We have a new organisation. It has acted as a catalyst with partners, brought in new staff and retained the good staff, and that has been something that has worked for us.

Chair

Excellent. Can we keep our answers a bit tighter because we are running up to deadlines here?

Marion Fellows

You will recognise I am another Marion from Scotland. Here we go. I want to talk about multiagency partnerships. Do you think the Government’s strategy for social work reform places enough emphasis on this?

Marion Russell

I think there is a confusion in the titles. It is a strategy for social work reform, so we are talking about reforming social work and what we want social workers to be able to do. Can I add to what Paul was saying in terms of the components about what Doncaster has done to improve the workforce of social workers? Those components are what Cornwall has done, what Essex has done and what other authorities have done if we are looking at social workers. But if we are looking at the wider care and protection of children, we do need to look at the other agencies, other professions. We have heard this morning about the Munro review of child protection. It is very much about a systemic approach and the systems that work with children. If we take a more recent burning issue of child sexual exploitation, there is no way that child sexual exploitation can be tackled—if that is the right word—just by social workers. You absolutely need to have police and health in there, and education; children are going to school and they are seen every day. If we are looking genuinely at the welfare and wellbeing of children we have to look across the board, but there is a confusion there if we are talking about social work reform and then what other agencies should do. That is perhaps some of the lack of clarity in the language in the reforms that was referred to earlier.

Dr Royston

Just to address the kind of wider issue of reform of children’s social care, the effect of multiagency working is obviously absolutely crucial and a particularly important example of that is local safeguarding children boards of course. The Children’s Society is represented on around 15 local safeguarding children boards across the country. One of the things in particular that needs to be addressed is the resourcing of multiagency working. We very much hope that Alan Wood’s review of local safeguarding children boards will address this in some detail. Last year, The Children’s Society produced a short analysis of funding for local safeguarding children boards and what was notable was that, while funding varied depending on the number of children within a local area, there was no indication, no significance about the number of children in need or the level of deprivation within a local area to be linked to the amount of funding for local safeguarding children boards. At the same time, funding levels were vastly different between areas, from one area that was about 81 pence per child up to another that was £6.95 per child. There needs to be a close look at the funding of local safeguarding children boards and what we can do to address that.

Chair

That is a good answer to your second question already so move on to third.

Marion Fellows

Yes, I was. Peter, this is really for you. The NSPCC is involved in work to improve the quality of serious case reviews. What do you think can be done to make sure that local authorities learn from failures from poor agency co-operation?

Peter Watt

Can I answer that and then a very quick answer to the first question as well?

Marion Fellows

Yes.

Peter Watt

In terms of serious case reviews, the NSPCC has done two things. We have set up something called the serious case review repository with the Association of LSCB Chairs. Essentially, we pulled together into one place for the first time all of the serious case reviews around the country, so you can come to us and they are all there. The second thing is we then produced thematic reports that are usable in supervisory meetings between social workers and so on about themes that emerge, so if there is a neglect theme that has emerged over the previous six months, we produce a bite-sized piece of learning. At a very practical level, when we talk a lot about learning from serious case reviews, it tends to be quite highfalutin, big, and feels very overwhelming. What we are trying to do with the Association of LSCB Chairs is produce bite-sized pieces of learning that can go straight into one-to-one supervisory meetings between social workers and learning is embedded in that way. Do you mind if I answer about multiagency working as well and agree with something that Marion said? Fundamentally, social workers do not operate in a vacuum. They can only be good social workers if they are operating in a multiagency environment. At the NSPCC, we employ 450 social workers, some in our helpline, some in child line, some in our service centres around the country. Fundamentally, they could not operate unless they are able to work with the education sector, the local authority, the Department of Health and hospitals in the local area. Therefore, when we talk about the reform of social work, it is important we do not just think about statutory social work, we also think about social workers operating in a range of settings because their requirement to work in a multiagency way is the same wherever they are working.

Marion Fellows

Yes, thank you for that. On training of social workers, how do you think you can include more focus on the importance of multiagency work? I take on board what you have just said, Peter, but I am sure that is not maybe the same right across the country.

Marion Russell

That goes back to something that was said earlier on this morning about the wider training of social workers. I have worked in child and families for 30 years and most of my work has been with adults because what happens to parents affects children. You have to be able to work with children and that is a very important part, but when you are effecting change that is with the adults. You need to understand what happens with adults and what the issues are for adults, and that takes a whole family perspective and a holistic perspective with all the other agencies as well. You need to be able to work with mental health social workers, to understand the Mental Capacity Act, to know about all the various aspects around about that, and that goes all the way through. I would very worried about narrowing down the education and training of social workers and would be advocating, and Cornwall would be advocating, for keeping it wider and more generic, so you can incorporate all of that in your understanding.

Chair

Does anyone have anything to add that, something new?

Dr Royston

I just had a comment particularly on training. For social work training, there needs to be better information about appropriate signposting and referrals and how to signpost and refer better. I used to work as a welfare rights adviser some time ago, and this is one area where social work professionals, from the experiences that I had, not only sometimes did not know a great deal about how to advise families on their entitlements and the financial support they could receive but also—perhaps in some ways more worryingly—did not always know what they did not know. Addressing when appropriately to signpost is crucial.

Chair

Thank you very much, Sam. We are going to observe a minute’s silence at 11 o’clock. The whole House is doing this to mark the tragedy yesterday in Brussels, so if we can all stand for a minute in silence that would be good. One minute’s silence was observed.

Catherine McKinnell

I asked this of a previous witnesses; we have discussed this with them, so it would be interesting to hear your views. The Government cite evidence that shows apparently that there is no correlation between spending and effectiveness of children’s services. Could you comment on that, whether you agree with that or whether you have any evidence to the contrary, any of you?

Marion Russell

I do believe that there is a correlation. I absolutely take what previous witnesses pointed out, where you can spend and still have bad services, but if we are talking about increased caseloads and lower numbers of social workers, we are talking about a retention crisis and social workers in any agency working with more families. If you have more work to do and less of you to do it, there is going to be a difference in the quality of the work that you do. But another aspect that I do think is really important is workforce development. We have had evidence before that the initial training and particularly the CPD—the continued professional development—of social workers is important to make a confident and skilled workforce. But if you are an authority with a limited amount of money and a number of services to give to families then it is not unusual for that workforce development budget, the money that would be spent on the training and the continuous training and expertise of social workers, to go. My experience as chair of the network, talking to principal children and family social workers across the country, has been that while we know what we need to do, if it comes to a service here or workforce development there, that is the money that is going to go and, therefore, you do not have the investment in the staff and improvement that you want.

Catherine McKinnell

Anyone else? Peter, you were nodding.

Peter Watt

I would agree with that. We have acknowledged that there is no direct correlation between spending loads of money and getting fantastic outcomes for children.

Ian Mearns

I am a Newcastle United supporter. I know exactly what bad investment is about there.

Peter Watt

You would be very familiar with that then. That said, also at the moment the context in which social workers are operating—as Ray referred to in the previous session—with early intervention in particular under pressure, that is creating pressure within the system because early intervention is not happening and, therefore, crises are happening and social workers are becoming busier. When you look at the overall reform, the set of reforms the Government are proposing, if you look at things like the What Works Centre and all those things, they have to be welcome because the answer has to be best evidence-based practice and those sorts of things. It is not just money; it has to be having interventions that are both efficient and impactful and proved to be impactful. I think that is all to be welcomed. The appeal from the NSPCC to the Government on this would be that as well as having a What Works Centre about individual interventions, there is a need almost for a What Works for the overall reform agenda. When you put the total reform agenda together, how will they know, how will we know that the totality of those reforms has created a more efficient, beneficial impact to children and families around the country? How will we know that? I think that is a key question that the Government have not addressed that I think will go some way to answering the question of how do we create more for less going forward.

Paul Moffat

I think one has to be careful about making the correlation, because there are some authorities that have had significant investment with very few signs of improvement. But it is an old adage, isn’t it? You get what you pay for and if you want quality frontline services, you want quality preventative services, you reduce demand on your high-cost social care services, you have to invest in that. I am nervous about those authorities that achieve well, perform well and then subsequently there is a financial hit to those, because in the long term I think that impacts on children and families. I am a bit nervous about saying there is not a correlation, but equally I am nervous about saying there is clearly a distinct correlation always.

Catherine McKinnell

We have already touched on early intervention with the previous panel. There is a significant body of evidence that shows that it does bring about savings, but in the longer term, and I think at the moment, most local authorities and children’s services are facing quite short-term budget challenges, let’s say. Would you like to comment on what is your experience of the ability of children’s services to invest in early intervention to take a longer-term approach? If that is not happening, what would be your suggestions for how that could be better enabled?

Dr Royston

The Children’s Society released a report a few weeks ago on this issue, along with Action for Children and National Children’s Bureau. We raised concerns there that identifiable funding for local authorities for early intervention services has fallen from the equivalent of £3.2 billion a year in 2010—based on the figures provided in the last local government finance settlement—to less than £1 billion by 2020. We, in combination, are extremely concerned about the impact that that has on the ability of local authorities to intervene early and to spend on those services, which we know do prevent the need for more intensive statutory interventions at a later stage in the development of problems. When we surveyed councillors about their views of what was going to happen to early intervention services in coming years, similarly the majority said that even with the business rate retention changes, spending on early intervention services was likely to fall in coming years. I think that that is a real worry and is likely to put more pressure on statutory services that have to pick up the pieces when early interventions do not happen and problems develop to become something more serious.

Catherine McKinnell

For clarification, have you produced that report on a geographical basis or are they all national figures and have you drawn any correlation? I am aware that certain parts of the country are suffering greater reductions in the grant and also rely more heavily on the grant. Is there an ability to get an evidence base from that perspective?

Dr Royston

Based on the figures that DCLG produced, we did produce the local authority funding reductions, so some information about how much individual local authorities were spending. I am afraid we have not looked at correlations between, for example, the deprivation of local areas and the reduction in funding available, but that could be something that we could have a look at.

Peter Watt

Could I make one point? When we talk about early intervention, there is a danger again. There is a box marked “early intervention” with a price against it. That is what we focus on and, of course, that is important, for the reasons we have said. There are other forms of early intervention that in a sense go unnoticed, but I go back to the stat that for every one child, the statutory agency has eight arms. Clearly, there is some support going into those eight in that sense, and I think if we are looking at a broader set of reforms around how do we keep children and families safer, we need to not forget that. As an example, we run something called the Child Protection in Sport Unit, and it was a Newcastle story with a Saturday morning football club. They were trained by the CPSU to have safeguarding as part of their core competencies. There was a young lad who came along, was due to be kicked off the team for forgetting his football boots three weeks running—which is not unreasonable if you are playing for a football team—but because of the training they had received, the safeguarding officer in the club said, “We asked him the fundamental questions here and it turned out there was something going on at home,” and there was intervention went in. That is early intervention. It goes unseen in terms of the box marks with early intervention we tend to talk about, but I think if we are genuinely going to make a difference for more children and families going forward, we cannot ignore that. That has to be seen as part of a general set of reforms that include statutory social work, voluntary social work and the wider community.

Ian Mearns

Peter, NSPCC has expressed concerns about the narrow focus of the reform programme on statutory child protection and the worry that it will fail to drive improvements in the wider system that works alongside and supports local authorities in fulfilling their duties. Are you concerned that the reforms will prevent social workers moving between local government and the private and voluntary sector?

Peter Watt

Yes, we have some concerns. I think the first thing to say is that we are broadly supportive of the reforms. As I have said, we are broadly supportive of things like the introduction of the accreditation system, although there are caveats and questions to be asked, as we all know. But at the moment, the way that the statements of knowledge are phrased, they are absolutely phrased in such a way that if they are interpreted literally, there is a real danger that if you are a social worker in the statutory sector, you will think twice about going to work in the voluntary sector because it is going to be difficult to go back again. Likewise, if you are already in the voluntary sector, you are going to be looking to get back into the statutory sector, because otherwise you are not going to be able to progress through the system. I think that is a terrible mistake. It appears to fly slightly, to say the least, in the face of the some of the things that the Prime Minister talked about before Christmas in terms of a broader set of providers within the sector. We talked about multiagency working. I think multiagency working is something that can happen within the social work profession as well as between the social work profession and other agencies. I do not think it is a complicated thing to solve. We are very pleased that KPMG and the DfE have six weeks ago, I think it was, agreed that we can take part, with a number of other charities, in a pilot around those statements of knowledge. That is really helpful and to be hugely welcomed. The bottom line is we do want a dynamic social work profession where people can move between the voluntary and the statutory sector. It is the way that we will keep skills, knowledge and ultimately retention levels up as well.

Ian Mearns

It sounds to me like you have drawn some fairly reasonable conclusions from what you are finding out there, but do you have any sort of evidence that helps back that up that we could see, for instance?

Peter Watt

I am sure we have, not in front of me, but I can take that away and we can supply that to the Committee.

Ian Mearns

If you could share that with us, that would be very useful. Thank you.

Peter Watt

Very happy to.

Ian Mearns

To other members of the panel, do you share the concerns that the NSPCC has?

Marion Russell

Linking back to some of the evidence given earlier today, I think it is the bit about social work is one profession, and it is also that divide between adults and children’s social work. I am responsible for our trainee and ASYE and NQSW programmes and so on. People come into social work for vocational reasons; you do not do it for the money. You come into it for vocational reasons because you want to contribute to society. You might start as a children’s social worker but find out that mental health is where you want to work. I started in addictions and moved to children and families. You need to be able to do that. You need to be able to move into the voluntary sector and you do need to be able to move back. The retention of social workers in practice being eight years, if we are absolutely restricting and narrowing it down and narrowing what people can do, then I can only see that having an unintended consequence of making that less rather than longer. I think everybody has been clear that retention of social workers is a major issue, not recruitment. I would agree with Barbara giving evidence earlier that we can get NQSWs, and most NQSWs I come across are absolutely fantastic. It is keeping them in the job when they are experienced and able to do it later and that flexibility needs to be there.

Ian Mearns

Because of the firefighting nature of what is happening around the country, in many respects there are great pressures within the sector. Do you think there is enough time to be doing enough CPD for social workers?

Marion Russell

Is there time within what they are doing?

Ian Mearns

Yes.

Marion Russell

Yes, I think you can. We do that in Cornwall. We have a career and qualification pathway in Cornwall, but one of the things that we have done with that is we have a structure where people can advance in their career. They can get to higher levels but still stay in practice, so if you are good at what you do, you do not then go and be the manager and tell other people what to do. You still do it, but you get credited from it. People that have the confidence and ability work at a higher rate, work at a better rate and, magically, in the extra hours they do in that week, manage to put learning into it and they do that. But that is what you get when you have a trusted, respected, confident workforce, not one that is running around worrying about failing.

Paul Moffat

I would agree with that. There is a missed opportunity if we do not look at how we retain staff, but also there is a lot of expertise out there that has moved out of the profession because it is no longer what they want to do and it is not the job that they went into. It is so far away from their core principles and values of why they wanted to go into social work. I think we need to try to think about how we attract people back into the profession. The second point I would make about the social work reforms is that assessment and accreditation is a good idea. We all want to raise the standards, but we have to do it in a way that does not scare the horses. We have just been part of the pilot that 30 staff went through and, because we have done a huge amount of investment in practice learning, they were less scared, but there were staff who have been around for some time who were worried about failure and what would happen and the consequences of that. I think a little bit more care could have been taken with regard to that.

Chair

One of the themes running through the White Paper is, of course, the attraction of innovation and how to bring about innovation, and it is suggested that we have a What Works Centre. What I would like to know is what you think that should look like and what it ought to be bringing to the table. Sam, would you like to go first, just briefly, of course?

Dr Royston

I think that there is not enough focus on the evidence base for different kinds of intervention. Drawing on some of the things that have been said previously, I think that the focus of that needs to be wider than statutory services; it needs to look at the effectiveness of associated services like early intervention services in delivering change for children. One thing I think that there does need to be in driving this forward is the involvement of the voluntary sector and learning from practice within the voluntary sector as well as within statutory services.

Chair

Does anyone else have anything to add to that?

Paul Moffat

We have four innovation projects going at the moment and it is helping us reshape the way in which we provide frontline services. The time that it has created for staff to think about providing services in a different way has been a huge benefit and built confidence and resilience with those workers.

Chair

Among many, I suppose, but certainly Bristol University has suggested that this centre should be operating within an academic environment with expertise and so forth. Is that something you would concur with, Marion?

Marion Russell

We are absolutely agreed that we need to have research and evidence, so we need to know what works and we need to have evidence that it works. Certainly, universities are set up in a better place to do research and to provide that kind of evidence, but it has to be in the real world, so it has to be in partnership with local authorities and voluntary agencies. I completely agree that no one person can do it; this has to be complete partnership working. I have a couple of reservations. First of all, innovations need to be sustainable. We cannot keep doing short-termism and just doing something else that works for a short period of time and then that gets binned and then something else starts. So with whatever innovations, we do need to have built-in sustainability and they need to do that systemic cultural change. They are not an add-on that happens over there, “That one did not work. We will do something else.” It is innovation with sort of roots and sustainability built into it as well. I have another thing that I would say about innovation. It is very difficult in Cornwall to get involved in many of these things because of geography and you have to bear in mind that it is not available. We cannot get involved in Step Up because the nearest university is four hours away. You have to bear in mind that there are hard-to-reach places and places that have difficulty. The last bit that I would say about innovation is absolutely have innovation, but the money for that innovation to come to the authority or the agency to work with the families and not have partners that money goes to—the money that could be used with families.

Peter Watt

Two very quick points. I think universities would clearly need to be involved. The NSPCC has 22 innovative services we are testing and have been for the last five years. Some of those are absolutely directly with the university and they are running randomised control trials; others are slightly looser. I think university involvement is critical, but I do not think it should be rooted in a university. I would agree with Marion that the key is it has to be rooted in what works in a local area, and that means it has to be rooted in frontline practice and communities. The very last point is a money one. Innovation costs, so I think it is right to say that with innovation and what works, you can in the long term make savings. However, running a randomised control trial about a particular intervention—does it work or does it not?—is not a cheap thing in itself to do, so there is a cost to a What Works Centre and a cost to innovation and understanding what does work.

Chair

Somewhere in the proposals, there is this theme that innovations should prove themselves within, say, 12 months or so. Do you think that is long enough and does it not contradict the overall theme about innovation, which is a sort of continuous process?

Dr Royston

I think 12 months is very short. Building on what Marion said about feedback from social workers, for our evidence for this inquiry we did a survey of practitioners who were social work trained and the theme that came back again and again and again was, “There is too much change.” I think that innovation is important; it is crucial in an awful lot of cases, but it needs time to bed in and be understood locally and it cannot be a continuous process of change, because that is one of the drivers of problems with retention of social work staff, among everything else.

Chair

Paul, do you have any thoughts?

Paul Moffat

The only comment I would make is that, even in the short period of time we have had this funding, it has highlighted some significant issues that we brought back to the area teams to use. An example of that is the Pause project, where we have repeat proceedings taken against mums in particular where there has been more than one child removed from their care. Some of the lessons we have learnt in the short period of time, eight months, about how we approach care proceedings, how we approach working with mums, has highlighted our practice needs to shift. So even in a short period of time, it can benefit, but I fully agree 12 months is not long enough to see significant transformation.

Marion Russell

Can I just add to Paul talking about the Pause project? That is an example where we do, as a sector, learn from each other. We have learned about the Pause project in Doncaster, Southwark, Hackney and so we know about that; we know that that is a good way of practice and we are looking at how we can bring that. Certainly, we are looking at how we can bring it in Cornwall, but I know other authorities are looking at how they can bring that, too. The bit about learning from innovation and sharing knowledge and ideas isn’t new—it is what we do—but, as Peter says, that needs funding.

Chair

Last but not least, it has been mentioned that charities might be sponsors of trusts. We have gone through that discussion already in the context of Ian’s reference to academies and so on as a like model, but have either the NSPCC or your organisation, Sam, been approached or have you had any discussions about such a model?

Peter Watt

We have not been approached formally and asked, “Would you take it on?” but we have certainly been involved in discussions about what greater role we and other charities could play and our response, as I said earlier on, is we already play a role and we are happy to play a bigger role. Our key role, as Sam was saying for his organisation, is about independence, challenge and innovation. We have the space, using the charitable funds that we have, to invest in what does work in intervention. Trying to judge what is neglectful abuse and what is not is quite a difficult judgment to make for a social worker. We have a service called the Graded Care Profile that we have been running in conjunction with the university. When we produce those results, we will be able to say to the sector, “This is what works.” That is for the sector as a whole. We would be very happy to work with numbers of local authorities on a more intensive basis, as indeed we are, for instance, in Blackpool, which is a very good example where we are working intensively, not just with the local authority, in fact, but with all the partners in an area trying to create some early intervention impacts. We would be very happy to have more relationships like that, but that is short of saying we would step in wholesale.

Dr Royston

Only to reflect what Peter said, we have started to have discussions about what the Government thoughts on sponsorship of social care trusts are. At the start of this week, we attended a round table, organised by the Secretary of State for Education, about sponsorship of social care trusts. We will be very interested to see where those conversations lead.

Chair

Does anybody have any final comments they would like to make to us that we have overlooked? Do we have everything right, Paul, because you made a correction straight off?

Paul Moffat

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that opportunity at the beginning.

Chair

But you have had your opportunity and you did make it clear. I would like to thank all four of you for coming along today. It has been a very interesting session. I know our members are a bit diminished, but we had some timing issues earlier. We found it very useful, so thank you very much indeed. Oral evidence: Social work reform, HC 690 21