Blog #26

On 30th June 2021, I and John Radoux met with Josh MacAlister, the chair of the current review of children’s social care in England (the ‘Care Review’). Also present was civil servant Shazia Hussain, who had also been at the first meeting.

John and I have tweeted about the first two meetings. I decided to blog about this one as it provides an opportunity to weave in some of my reflections and concerns about the possible direction of travel for children’s social care. There are no plans for further meetings.

A bit of background. These meetings came about after a request in the early days of the Review from a prominent care experienced campaigner for the chair to meet with critics of the Review and the wider programme of reform in children’s social care. I understand the chair had approached this person directly about the Review. Neither I or John had sought any meetings with the chair or anyone else involved with the Review but went ahead each for our own reasons; a key one we shared was that we felt it was right as people with critical stances on the Review and on the appointment of the chair to take up the offer to meet the chair in person.

I would also like to point out from the outset that my stake in this Review pales in comparison with those people who have lived/living experience of social care, social work and/or the care system. This is a highly sensitive and emotive subject and I am aware of and understand the depth of feeling surrounding these issues. My aim here is to take a balanced and fair view. In doing so, I hope I do not inadvertently diminish the importance of the feelings of people with a much greater personal stake than I have. I tried to use the opportunity of the latest meeting to introduce the chair to a person with experience of the care system but it didn’t work out. Nobody’s fault, though I might have communicated better with all concerned, and, to be clear, the chair and the Review team did try to make it happen.

Onto the meeting itself. The chair started by positing the need for ‘more nuanced debates’ on the key issues, with which I stated my agreement. He also asked if there were ways to hold such debates in a way that moved beyond the question of providing more resources. I thought this interesting and, initially, possibly telling. On reflection, it simply be a realistic acceptance of the stark fact that additional resources are simply not going to be forthcoming from this administration (without at least costing them against savings elsewhere, an invidious task in any analysis). So does it then become a mere question of how to make best use of what we have? That seems pragmatic but there is surely danger in continuing to promote the narrative that we can do more with less. For sure, there are local authorities throughout the land that have had to deliver more with less for several years now, but this is clearly unsustainable. The pressures in the sector are huge, and growing. I do not buy into the narrative of a ‘broken system’ which has been a mantra of reformists for some time. I do recognise however that ‘the system’ is deeply dysfunctional in places. The Review and the chair have already attracted strong criticism for its framing of the issues, including, to cite a notable recent example, from social workers for casting them as agents in an overly investigative, adversarial child protection system in both the recent ‘Case for Change’ and in the Sunday Times interview which trailed it. On that point, this is clearly an example of where a more nuanced conversation is needed. Two clear reasons immediately spring to mind: 1. children’s and families social work in England takes a variety of forms aside from child protection; and 2. it is the case that too many families experience social work as unnecessarily investigative and adversarial. The question is what the Review will recommend as the solutions. I have my own views on what that might look like, which I set out at the end of this piece. I’ll take the opportunity now to point out now that I don’t presume to have any answers here. The aim is prompt reflection and debate. However, I do believe it will be a worthwhile exercise for sceptics to imagine viable alternative destinations to the ones the Review and the wider reform agenda appear to be carrying us toward.

Having said all that, I don’t believe we should simply shut up and stop calling for more money in the system. However, I am increasingly of the view that such calls should come with well thought-out ideas about how that money should be spent. I don’t think anyone with reasonable grasp of the issues would expect that the answer is to simply pour more money into a system which is not functioning well in too many places. But the system is also full of brilliance and expertise, and has a ready supply of knowledge and experience about how additional money could best be used. (Forgive me for teaching granny to suck eggs, but this is a reflective piece after all.) Between us, we surely already know what works, and, crucially, what doesn’t. The job of a review of this sort, then, is to find this stuff out and then seek to make it happen. Whether it is doing that is clearly the subject of hot, often inflamed, debate. The point I’m making is that we need to keep making the case for the resources needed and not fall into the trap of accepting the way things are because we have been forced to ‘do more with less’. The cost is too high — unconscionable in fact, playing out in the lives of the people at the sharp end of the lived and living experience of policy.

I agree with the chair that more nuanced conversations are needed, along with suggestions and examples of how resources are best used. Where he and I are likely to differ is on the detail/design. The chair referred to ‘models’ in this context, and I do see what he means. But — and this may be making a mountain out of a molehill — I do question this conception of services being ‘model’-based. I’ll caveat this next bit by saying I’m viewing this through a social work lens, so I do not expect it to resonate with everyone with a stake in this. However, what that lens affords me is the capacity to see and therefore work with, complexity. Indeed, while recognising the dangers of positing one theory as definitive of social work, I believe we could learn a lot from complexity theory about social work as a relational activity of the self within the context of interconnected networks of relationships and as a form of political activism at individual and collective level. This article (and the one it responds to) are useful primers in complexity theory and the concept of ‘complex adaptive systems’ social work.

Pycroft and Wolf-Branigin (2015) argue that ‘complexity theory helps us in the tradition of social science/social theory to model the world around us, but develops our understanding of the dynamic, evolving, embedded and stratified nature of reality… The key lesson from complexity is that our mental modelling of the world around us needs to be as dynamic as the phenomena that we are studying, and that we are always a part of the system that we are observing’.

Reading this paper, I am struck by how resonant it is with key ideas underpinning the much-maligned ‘Blueprint for Children’s Social Care’ previously authored by the Review chair with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), BCG’s think tank the Centre for Public Impact, along with others, and widely held to be a blueprint for privatisation of children’s social care. The ‘blueprint’ is underpinned by seductive ideas about individual worker autonomy and teams freed from the burdens of bureaucracy and unnecessary management hierarchies. A mantra of Frontline, the fast track social work training scheme founded by the Review chair, is ‘freedom and responsibility’, a term which unsurprisingly makes an appearance in the CfC. Which social worker wouldn’t want to be able to do whatever it takes to support children and families, unencumbered by unnecessary form-filling and the need to gain permission from a manager before acting? But, context is everything, and in social work we should be wary of the dangers of seeing particular models as silver (or blue) bullets, not least because we most often work with complexity in highly regulated, statutory contexts. Can you see where this going?

The point is: if we are going to challenge the Review and the programme of reform of which it is part, then the credibility of that challenge surely rests on recognising that the Review — and the wider reform agenda — will absorb and re-present ideas that appeal to and appease critics and challengers which means acknowledging what the Review might be actually be right about, while pointing out how these ideas may be co-opted and enlisted (including through cherry-picking the evidence) in the service of agendas which actually run counter to the intentions of the people originally positing the ideas. This is not by any means intended to suggest anyone is a stooge or a dupe but rather to reiterate a point that I often make which is that in the contest of ideas everything is up for grabs and one important contribution social work can make is to apply critical thinking and critical reflection in the process of unpacking the layers of complexity and meaning in the problems, and solutions, before us.

The chair asked if I had any reflections on the recently published ‘Case for Change’ (CfC). I will be honest and say that I did give the view that I thought it an impressive document that martialed an array of information and sources in a way that was, I thought, readable to the layperson. I said I did think there were gaps (to be expected) and some problems of language and framing. I also said that the graphic design and layout, notwithstanding the views of some that it was somehow not in keeping with a Review of this sort, might actually serve to make it more accessible or at least approachable to a wider audience, including non-professional people. I suppose there’s a balance to be struck between demonstrating a requisite degree of rigour and producing something that people actually read, including the public for whom such things are meant to be for.

Feeling somewhat out of my depth on the detail I did, if I’m honest, hide behind Ray Jones’s excellent piece in Social Work Today which the chair agreed was a “very fair” response.

The further three reflections I had were on the following: community responsibilisation in the context of poverty, the possibility of increased roles and influence of private interests and the possibility of separating out the protection/safeguarding and helping functions of children’s services.

I said that it was notable that the report states ‘[w]e have now reached a point where the weight of evidence showing a relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect (Bywaters, Bunting, et al., 2016), and state intervention in family life is strong enough to warrant widespread acceptance’ and that this would be welcomed by those of us with a structural focus on the determinants impacting on the lives of children and families. I welcomed the note of caution ‘that practitioners should never conflate poverty with neglect’, which is a key theme in the work of parent-activist Tammy Mayes, and said those of us with a structural focus need to be mindful of the dangers of inadvertently stigmatising and shaming people in poverty. As Tammy says: Poverty is not neglect. Neither, we reflected, are abuse and neglect the preserve of people who have financial challenges. However, the explicit recognition of the ‘social gradient’ that recognises social and economic deprivation as key among the social determinants of the social ills that lead to poor — at times (TOO OFTEN) the worst imaginable — outcomes for children is, on the face of it, welcome.

Had we had time, I might have gone on to say that, taking a structurally-focused social worker’s view, there is arguably a tension between this recognition that poverty should no longer be seen as the ‘wallpaper of practice’ and the emphasis on individualisation and responsibilisation that underpin the wider neoliberal project to reform and reshape the state and its support functions according to the dictates and logic of late phase capitalism, of which this Review is arguably a part. In my view, one of those more nuanced debates being posited should focus on this tension.

I gave the view that the responsibilisation of communities is a strong and seductive theme in the report. Survey-led research that people have found their communities ‘more supportive’ in the pandemic coupled with the assertion that ‘COVID-19 demonstrated that a state-run, professional role can be limited’ chimes with the ‘communities have proven they don’t need government’ line pushed by a government that has used the pandemic as pretext to hyper-accelerate its agenda to shrink the state and put public services in the control of their millionaire and billionaire donors. Again, had I the time, I might have gone on to say this framing of the state and its support functions as sclerotic and unsophisticated has been a key tactic of proponents of (for want of a better term) neoliberal reform, expressed in the mantra that low-regulation and private enterprise enable ‘innovation’ and ‘thinking outside the public sector box’. This of course fails to realise — or rather chooses to ignore — that such notions are themselves a product of thinking inside a particular box, one that is bounded by the logic, dictates and impulses of (big) business. A decade of ‘innovation’ in education and social care has shown that, to a large extent, what is possible in the public sphere under the influence of the private sector is a repackaging by consultants and ‘social entrepreneurs’ of things we already know and delivered by organisations very often funded from the public purse while also in hock to private, often opaque, backing from corporate and private interests. (We might call this ‘noshitonomics’. Feel free to use that.)

John made the point that communities beset by the social problems that drive people toward contact with social services are not likely to have the capital to enable them to ‘step up’ in the way they very often want to, with which I strongly agreed and which the chair said was a point he was well aware of and giving much consideration.

I said that tackling poverty is a monumental task and requires a state-led, multi-pronged solution. While it is true that poverty-aware practice within children’s services can and should alleviate the symptoms of poverty they cannot treat the underlying causes, which requires a political solution (for example raising taxes on those who have more to subsidise decent housing and accessible childcare for families for whom the cost of working is prohibitive, and provide community-based and –accountable state-led services, that sort of thing). I said that, of course, that is unlikely to happen, especially under this government, and so recognise the pragmatic and sensible approach might be to say: we must do what we can with what we have. As I said before, I get that. Again, if I’d had the time, I would have said we must at the very least do so in the knowledge that privatisation of public services has been not only a colossal waste of public money but it has repeatedly failed to deliver for the public (see the vaccine roll out programme versus the ‘track and trace’ system as a recent stark comparative example). I would have also said we must also bear in mind that privatisation comes in many forms. Academisation, big/venture philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, social impact investing… all examples of wealthy elites acting in seeming benevolent fashion while using these activities to dodge taxes, redirecting money away from public services and setting the agenda as to what causes are worthy of funding. Yet, we continue to cede state functions and responsibilities to private interests and at the same time observe how global corporations are growing to become existential threats to democracy. I fear the result will be the (continuing) emergence of a new corporate authoritarianism in which democratic accountability is a thing of the past. And I am sorry to say social care, social work and education are already providing ready conduits to that.

I did say to the chair that, once we open these doors to private interests, whether they be for-profit or third sector/charities/philanthropy, it doesn’t matter what good will and trust there is among those involved because people move on, retire or die and that good will and trust goes with no guarantees of it being replaced, but the structures that allow private interests to be involved in support for people in vulnerable situations remain, ripe for exploitation by less desirable actors. The chair said that I had posited “one version of the future” and suggested others were possible. I will admit to having a fairly bleak outlook on the future but I don’t think it’s a completely outlandish one, given the direction of travel in children’s social care (and, closely linked, education) over the past decade or so, our venal and incompetent government and the tendency of business logic to subsume all into considerations of the bottom line.

The CfC poses some questions and invites feedback. Some are fundamental (‘What do you think the purpose of children’s social care should be?’); some specific (‘What do you think about our proposed definition of family help?’). One caught my eye in particular:

‘How do we address the tension between protection and support in Children’s Social Care that families describe? Is a system which undertakes both support for families and child protection impeded in its ability to do both well?’

I am obviously guilty of seeing all this through the lens of my own preoccupations, and on the face of it the above seems a reasonable question. But the question, particularly the second part, is, whichever way you look at it, at least suggestive of the separating out of the ‘support’ and ‘protection’ functions of children’s social services, which would further fracture and divide an already highly demarcated social work profession. This is of great concern because it would undoubtedly further weaken and undermine a profession the social justice underpinnings of which are incompatible with the individualising, pathologising tendencies of late phase capitalism and neoliberalism and is therefore constantly under threat from those with vested interests in maintaining inequalities. I put this concern to the chair who said at this stage it was crucial he kept “an open mind” in respect of the Review recommendations.

There was a point late the meeting when the chair remarked that he didn’t expect us to change each other’s minds on things, which prompted me to consider what conclusions he had already reached. It also prompted me consider the purpose of these meetings and reflect on his call for ‘more nuanced’ debates. I suspect we may well have different ideas about what sorts of ‘more nuanced’ debates are needed.

In summary, there was nothing in the CfC or my meeting with the chair to allay my concerns that the Care Review’s final recommendations will feature some or all of these key components, based on an analysis of previous and current developments in the reform of social care, social work and education:

- children’s and family social work completely refashioned and, indeed, replaced with ‘child/family protection professionals’ trained to tackle social problems with prescribed skill sets rooted in behaviour/parenting modification techniques and other specific interventions

- an accreditation scheme will be used to standardise skill sets for social workers and promote a particular and specialised children and families ‘social work’ (here we would do well to watch carefully how this may distance the profession and applied field of social work in England from the IFSW Global Definition of Social Work)

- lack of acknowledgement that poverty and its maintenance/perpetuation is a political choice and is itself an industry benefitting the very big businesses who seek to launder their reputations through philanthropic activity

- increased emphasis on ‘early help’, again focusing on parenting skills and behaviour. Consequence may be net-widening leading to low income families living with mental health issues, substance misuse issues and physical and learning disabilities being disproportionately targeted — technology such as machine learning/predictive analytics using big data harvested from local authority and other public records will play a key role (already underway)

- lip service will continue to be played to the evil of excessive profit in children’s social care, but the influence of big business and wealthy dynasties in the third sector will go unremarked; there will be an increased role for big charities and third sector operators with opaque and accountable funding streams, and which foster ‘corporate partnerships’ with big businesses whose profit relies on the perpetuation of social disadvantage

- global big business will continue to influence the direction of travel in English social care and social work while advancing its own interests through the connections it makes via its ‘pro bono’ support and financial backing for charities and social enterprises.

I sincerely hope I am wrong and I raise these flags as part of my contribution to promoting the nuanced conversations I believe we need to be having.