The week in public services: 30th July 2019
This week: the new Government; more police officers; and the school ‘disadvantage gap’
General
New Government; new ministers. I’m not going to add to the reams of commentary about what the makeup of the new Government, or specific ministers, mean — but in case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s your essential briefing:
· The new Government formation, as it happened
· What the new Government means for public services
· What the new Government means for the Spending Review
· What Boris Johnson’s public service pledges are likely to mean
Health and Social Care
Last week, a new Health Foundation briefing looks at emergency hospital admissions from care homes, and finds that residential care homes have higher rates of admissions than nursing homes. Many of these admissions might be avoidable — 41% were for conditions that were manageable, treatable, or preventable outside of hospital.
Whilst we’re still waiting for that green paper, here’s imPower on how to improve adult social care. Their suggestions? Accept that adult social care is a complex — not just complicated — system. They argue that this means service leaders need to: reframe their ambitions; focus on frontline delivery; understand and change behaviours; manage ‘interfaces’ and manage ‘trajectories’.
Children and Young People
The Education Policy Institute’s big annual report about educational disadvantage is out. Concerningly, the education disadvantage gap — the difference in attainment between pupils eligible for Pupil Premium funding and all other pupils — has stopped closing. LKMco have a good article delving into the statistics in more detail.
Regional Adoption Agencies — where councils pool resources in order to provide joint adoption services — have had some successes, according to a Department for Education evaluation. There is some evidence that the agencies have sped up the time it takes to make adoption decisions.
Interesting weedsy stuff from the Department for Education and Education and Skills Funding Agency’s (ESFA) annual accounts. In 2019/20, the Government allowed 28 councils to transfer money from their schools funding block to their high needs block (presumably in order to meet rising demand for specialist support from pupils with Education, Health, and Care plans).
On that note, Karen Wespieser looks at whether school teachers in England have enough access to high-quality SEND training. TL;DR — no. She sets outs ideas on how to improve it.
Law and Order
Russel Webster has summarised what we now know from the Ministry of Justice’s annual report and accounts. Some — surprising — good news:
· The increase in prison officer numbers has enable all 92 closed male prisons to train 15,000 staff as key workers
· The percentage of ‘cracked’ or ineffective trials in crown courts and magistrates’ courts remained stable — not getting worse — compared to last year
Johnson is cracking on with the promised police recruitment drive. The main goal, clearly, is to boost police numbers, but increased involvement of the Home Office via a new national board marks a turning point in terms of their engagement with pressing police problems. This comes after the Home Office largely left Police and Crime Commissioners to take the lead over the past few years — as Rick Muir has pointed out.
One conundrum with the police recruitment drive is that increasing police officers by 20,000 will involve hiring more than 20,000 new officers — possibly 45,000 — if leaving rates remain at the same level. So what are the Government’s plans to improve retention — as well as recruitment?
A useful article by Jamie Grieson, considering all this in the round, considers whether hiring a lot more police officers will make the streets safer. “[Even] if it is accepted that shrinking police forces are relevant to rising crime, to focus solely on officer numbers would still be to ignore a wide range of underlying issues […] linked to cuts in public spending”.
