Leading academic questions wisdom of Northamptonshire's children's trust plans

A leading authority on social work has warned against plans to set up a children’s trust in Northamptonshire and says focus needs to be put on stabilising social care services.

Professor Ray Jones has said calming down the churn of senior staff and focusing on frontline services is the key to turning around the failing children’s services and that a children’s trust is not the way to bring that about.

Last week it was revealed the director appointed last month to set up the new independent trust that would take over children’s services for Northamptonshire has already decided to move on. The government appointed children’s commissioner says the recruitment of a new director is now on hold during the coronavirus pandemic.

This comes against a backdrop of several years of chaos, damning Ofsted reports and unsafe practices in the department which been severely criticised after the tragic murders of two young children and also in its failure to spot that a Northampton boy was suffering severe abuse and cruelty from his family.

Last year the first children’s commissioner Malcolm Newsam, the director of children’s services and her director Jean Imray all resigned in the space of a few weeks after their relationship with the council’s other senior officers broke down.The plan now is to set up the stand alone trust – which the two new unitary councils due to be created in Northamptonshire would commission services from.

But Professor Jones, who is emeritus professor of social work at Kingston University and was director of children’s services in Wiltshire for 14 years says this is not the answer.

He said: “In 2014 the Conservative council decided that a new model was needed to make service savings and so it outsourced its children’s services, including child protection.

“That was a radical move to take services out of local government and attracted alot of attention at the time. One of the consequences of that decision was that it created increasing instability and chaos. It led to a lot of uncertainty for social workers and to two damning Ofsted inspections in 2018 and 2019

“The chaos that has built up over the years has got worse rather than better.”

He says moving to a trust is not only hugely expensive – the costs of setting it up can run to £4m – but takes the focus off the improvement of services.

He said: “It confuses accountability. Who then is responsible for children’s services, when services are provided by an independent company? It delays making the improvements that need to be made. There is a major impediment to getting on with the job of stabilising and there are genuine concerns about the trust model.”

Ray Jones has also been concerned about the churn of senior management in the council’s children’s services department.

He said: “There is no real culture being created. It must be a very difficult job currently to be a social worker in Northamptonshire.”

And he thinks that the Government insisting on a trust model for the county shows a lack of confidence in the two new councils that will be created next year.

He said: “The councils that are given the opportunity to create their own cultures, these are the council’s that do really well. The council’s that are changing all the time fail to improve services. What needs to happen in Northamptonshire is it needs to be calmed and settled down and that is not what government is allowing to happen.

“What is certain about Northamptonshire is it is spending more money, has more agency staff, commissioners, and all that costs money. Money that otherwise would have been spent on frontline services and the public are getting a really poor deal for it.

“There is no instant and quick fix for Northamptonshire but it needs to put an end to the distraction and start delivering good front line services.”

The children’s commissioner Andrew Christie has said ‘the launch of the Trust remains a priority and is a key component of the improvement programme.”

And the council’s Chief Executive Theresa Grant said: “The delays to the launch of the Children’s Trust caused by the Coronavirus outbreak are unfortunate but rising to the challenge of protecting our most vulnerable at this time has to be our first priority. However, we will recommence work immediately after the crisis abates and agree a go-live date at that time.

“We anticipate that this will align with the Local Government Reform timing and take place before, or alongside, LGR Vesting Day.”

But there are fears among current conservative councillors that things are not going well.

One Conservative councillor who wanted to remain anonymous said: “We are not being told anything at all about the trust. We are being given daily Covid-19 updates but nothing at all about the children’s trust, which is really worrying.”