The week in public services: 10th July 2019
This week: new children’s services research; what I learned at CIPFA conference; and the Conservative leadership campaign you haven’t heard about…
General
N.b. your author has been in a bit of rush to get this week’s edition out before going away — apologies for any big pieces of work I missed…
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)have set out their proposals on how to end austerity. TL;DR? They argue that the state needs to spend more on policies to improve care, skills, health, and ‘economic security’ — “matching European levels of social spending”. IPPR believe that this needs to be partially funded through higher taxes on higher-earners, and that services must be universal, to ensure that higher taxes have legitimacy. The report ends with an interesting discussion about differences in public support for universal and means-tested benefits and policies.
I was also in Birmingham this week for the annual CIPFA conference, chatting all things public services and performance. Amongst lots of useful chats, the main thing I took away was:
· Delays to the Spending Review *really matter* — I met several finance directors who told me they were assuming that grants set to end this financial year will continue into the next. Their local councillors resolutely refuse to close services they might be able to keep open. Which is fair — but also a risky assumption to make…
Health and Social Care
Very good new report from the House of Lords Economic Affairs committee on social care. I haven’t had the chance to read it in the depth it deserves, but on skim it seems very sensible and extraordinarily well-evidenced. Plus, they quoted us, so I was always going to be nice, right?
How can we know if integrated care initiatives are working? Pretty vital question, right? Shame it’s so hard to tell — but in this good blog, Eilis Keeble offers useful advice.
Matt Hancock has claimed that the social care green paper has been delayed by “narrow partisan politics”. Other unsubstantiated rumours include that his dog ate it, and that he thought he had it in his bag but left it at home by accident.
Meanwhile, the latest annual report on unpaid carers in the UK is out. Always a useful complement to the Office for National Statistics’ unpaid care figures. Worth reading to understand how the burden on unpaid carers are changing.
Children and Young People
It was the annual conference of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services last week. Lots of interesting discussion about children’s services — you can catch up with it all — including what they’d spend any new money on — here.
Over in the research world, good summary of Rick Hood’s research on the effects of social workers managing demand. Hood finds that (1) social work has become more ‘interventionist’ — a greater share of referrals are ending with children being put on child protection plans. Hood argues that this is (2) because local authorities are stuck in a “cycle of spending less time and money per child […] only leading to higher re-referral rates and workforce churn”.
He cites some interesting evidence that local authorities more likely to close Children-In-Need cases within 3 months, and less likely to have Child Protection plans lasting one or two years — are more likely to have high rates of rereferrals. This implies that they are storing up problems for later — not that they have become more efficient.
Speaking of excellent research, the Children’s Commissioner have also been doing some great work recently. Want to know how local authorities are spending money on children’s services? Read the whole thing in full, here. I tweeted what I thought were the most important points.
And an interesting bit of work from the Council for Disabled Children, bringing together different sources of data on children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Back in the policy world, the Welsh Government are setting targets to curb the number of children in care — but councils will not face penalties if they fall short. The rate of children in care is higher in Wales than in any of the other nations in the UK.
The Department for Education have made a new round of capital grants for schools contingent on schools receiving the money accepting a visit from a cost-cutting consultants and accepting their recommendations. The trouble is that the last time they recommended this, they promised their findings would only be advisory…
So then. Will this story go down badly? Or catastrophically badly? Your guess is as good as mine…
Lastly — a good wonky blog from Natalie Perera at the Education Policy Institute on the gap between SEND funding and demand. The formula to allocate spending — based on historic spending patterns — only intensifies this shortfall.
Law and Order
The Police Inspectorate’s latest ‘State of Policing’ report was released last week. Key findings? Police are performing well given increasing demand; the wider criminal justice system is “dysfunctional”; there is a “mismatch” between funding and public expectations; and the structure of the police — in 43 separate forces — can hinder co-operation and intelligence sharing.
The sections on ‘new’ — or rather, better-recognised and recorded — crimes — from domestic abuse to online fraud — paint a stark picture of the changing demands on the police. The National Crime Agency report that there has been a large increase in referrals of online child abuse images, for example.
Another important new report from New Philanthropy Capital details the decline in funding for charities working in the justice sector. Grant funding fell 50% between 2013 and 2014, which the report authors believe is related to the introduction of Transforming Rehabilitation — and funders’ concerns that their grants are “subsiding contracts or private sector profits”.
Great article from Matt Burgess on the flaws in the Met’s facial recognition tests. A lot of false positives, and the criteria for being put on a watchlist are far from clear. Not to mention the watchlists are, apparently, somewhat out-of-date.
Neighbourhood services
The focus was on how to stop councils going bust and how to combat the social care crisis. It’s the Conservative leadership race you didn’t hear about — but one that highlighted the growing gulf between those in SW1 postcodes and those not. Good piece from Patrick Butler on the contest to become head of the Local Government Association.
Jamie Jamieson, who won that contest and became the new leader of the Local Government Association, has called on the Government to remove restrictions on councils increasing council tax so councils can increase spending on social care. The LGA are worried that if a three-year Spending Review doesn’t go ahead, councils will be forced to plan for redundancies and service closures which will prove unnecessary.
