The week in public services — 13 February 2019
This week: the stories behind austerity, some actual data about social care providers, and a farewell.
This will be my last Week in Public Services. It’s basically an ongoing literature review we do for ourselves, but we hope some other people find it useful. As ever, this week’s edition was largely ghostwritten by Graham — surely one of the hardest-working wonks in public-service land. I leave you in his, and the team’s, capable hands.
The IFS have published their look ahead to the Spending Review. My key take-away? The ‘end of austerity’ is not exactly nigh. You could read their report, but I’d recommend watching their event with our very own Gemma Tetlow, where she talks about what the consequences of all this money stuff will be. That’s the important bit, right?
Health and social care
It’s easy to make fun of ‘digital health secretary’ Matt Hancock. But you can’t really fault his latest missive. He says that by 2021, he wants email to be the default mode of NHS communication. That seems pretty reasonable, right?
“Since 2000 the NHS has had six national plans and 10 reorganisations”. Yikes. David Oliver reflects on what has (and hasn’t) been gained, in the BMJ.
The new GP contract has the potential to push forward the promising developments we talked about in this year’s Performance Tracker — making it easier for people to see other types of health professionals, leaving GPs to deal with the most appropriate cases. Summarised in a useful Nuffield blog.
Yikes, part 2: “It shames British political culture that the two main English parties could come so close to consensus on such a contentious subject, each grasping the need for higher contributions from those most able to pay for their care, and still allow aggressive partisanship to thwart progress”
It’s pretty hard to get a handle on the financial pressure facing providers of adult social care — there’s just not that much information about them. So this survey of care providers provides welcome insight — we can’t believe we hadn’t heard of it! The data suggests that providers are feeling less financial pressure than last year, but that they’re increasingly worried about shelling out for agency staff.
We’re pretty sceptical of ‘robot baby seals’ and the like here at WiPS towers. But this good news story from the Guardian seems to show tech genuinely allowing care workers to spend more time caring (although cost of the tech undisclosed). Maybe there *is* scope for tech to do concrete good in social care?
In more ‘people actually coming up with things that might actually help the social care sector, other than buckets of cash’, here’s a great report from Bob Hudson of the University of Kent. How many policy papers quote Gramsci?
All the sticking-plaster cash in the world won’t help you, if you’ve no staff to spend it on. Global Futures, a think tank, estimate that the Government proposed £30,000 immigration salary threshold could mean 115,000 fewer social care staff by 2026. They project adult residential care will be most affected. But don’t worry — the Government has launched a new campaign to encourage more people into a social work career.
They argue — imho, convincingly — that social care will be one of the most-affected sectors because: (1) there is little scope for investment in labour-saving technology, and (2) care workers’ wages won’t rise to meet recruitment because most social care is funded by councils, which have held down payments because of austerity, rather than an increase in EEA migrants. They want the Home Office to put social care workers on a Shortage Occupation List
Children and young people
The solution to school recruitment: lower the teacher training standards? That’s what some training providers say they’re being asked to do…
We don’t capture all the education happenings in our briefing — but the Pearson Policy Eye does! Contains good quote round-up as well — definitely worth a read.
Sticking-plaster cash injections: not a good long-term strategy, but they can help. They allowed the President of ADCS to “delay cuts to early help and safeguarding services for 12 months!”
Local government
Lots of people out their speaking our language on public service spending cuts and their consequences.
First up, the Public Accounts Committee sings our tune on the ‘crisis, cash, repeat’ pattern in public services almost word-for-word:
“The Government has had to inject large amounts of additional funding to ensure that the local authority sector can keep going in the short-term…Yet disturbingly, there is still no sign that the Department has a clear plan to secure the financial sustainability of local authorities in the long-term.”
Quite. Read the full thing here.
Or, if you like stories to go with your charts and numbers, have a look at this excellent bit of reporting in the Manchester Evening News on the stories behind local government cuts. So many choice quotes, including:
“Libraries, such as the one in Miles Platting, were among the first things to go, with library spending in Manchester now down by nearly 40pc. When I ring one Bury library now run by volunteers, the recorded message says it all: ‘This is Bury council. The number you have dialled is unallocated.’”
Shadow Labour MHCLG spokesperson Andrew Gwynne has noticed that local government leadership has been pretty much ignored by Whitehall in recent years. His proposal? A local government ‘commission’ which would meet monthly with cabinet ministers to feed in their ideas/issues. Sounds rather sensible.
Law and order
MoJ has published a review into controversial legal aid cuts — and committed to making changes. Read the detail here — or our take here.
Being Chief Executive of HM Prisons and Probation service has got to be one of the toughest leadership gigs in the public sector right now — so good luck to new appointee Jo Farrar. In his welcome quote, MoJ Perm Sec Richard Heaton suggested It was a time of ‘cautious optimism’ for the service. Hmm.
Stark findings from the latest police federation survey — looks like morale in the service is getting decidedly worse. Graham threaded some of the key points.
It’s alright though, lads — Sajid Javid’s going to make it illegal for social media platforms to host content which might fuel knife crime. That should solve it.
