David Lane - Editor Getting the Basics Right A fundamental change in philosophy, slipped in as part of a reshuffle The recent Cabinet reshuffle caused quite a flurry and was seen widely as being ill thought out on the part of the Prime Minister. It was an unusual reshuffle in that it was not just a matter of moving people around between jobs, but of making fundamental changes to the shape of the Government. Whether it proves to have been badly thought out or not remains to be seen, but the changes had all been mooted for some time. Media attention was directed mainly at the implications for Scotland and Wales, and the planned abolition of the Lord Chancellor’s role. It is not the job of this magazine to comment on these changes, but we would like to add our voice to the chorus of childcare organisations which have welcomed the creation of the post of Minister for Children. Professionals have been pressing for this for a long time. Years ago, a delegation to meet Margaret Thatcher was organised by Baroness Lucy Faithfull to point out the need for a focus of this sort at Government level. Her response was to dismiss the assembled professionals as being divided and in need of getting their act together. She is said to have described them collectively as “ninnies”. That was twenty years ago. Since that time, we have had services for children and young people divided between the Department for Education and Skills (and its predecessors), the Department of Health and the Home Office. While they have preached about co-operation to the agencies responsible for delivering services in the field, these central departments have often provided a very poor model themselves. The current Government, however, has set up the Children’s and Young People’s Unit, based in the Cabinet Office, and although it has faltered at times, there has been much more joined-up thinking than before. At long last, the obvious culmination has been the creation of the post of Minister. Lord Laming wanted this to be a Cabinet post, but realistically the first stage had to be the Minister, and for this we should be thankful. The Minister for Children will head up a new Children and Families Directorate in the DfES. The Directorate will be responsible for : • The Children and Young People’s Unit • Connexions • The Children’s Fund • Sure Start and all Early Years services • Children’s Social Services • The family policy responsibilities previously in the Home Office • All family law (public and private) previously covered by the Lord Chancellor’s Department. That the post should be linked with education is appropriate. It is important to establish the right philosophy and values from the start. If the main aim is to offer children and young people positive opportunities to grow and develop, it is correct to focus on the normal rather than problems in the first place, and to deal with problems in the context of the normal. Of course there need to be good services for children with problems, but the more that their positive normal attributes can be emphasised, the better. Whether their problems relate to disabilities, emotional or social difficulties, the more that children can be integrated in the wider community - including schooling - the better. There were those who used this argument in the late 1940s and who would have liked to have this country to adopt the model widely used in Europe, where services for children with difficulties are provided under the aegis of education. If specialist services had been based firmly within education, this would have had the combined effect of making the normal education system acknowledge the needs of children with special needs while avoiding the separation of services and the isolation of children with special needs. That argument lost out in England and Wales. In the event, over the last forty or more years there has been a gulf between the education system, which has often been equated with schooling, and the care system which has looked after disturbed and delinquent children. Children’s Departments were set up under the Children Act 1948 and they were subsumed into Social Services Departments under the Local Government Act 1970. Now they are being separated out again. Now is the time to bridge the gulf and provide joined up services. Furthermore, the focus on children and young people should provide a welcome boost to the development of specialist skills and services. Some of these have been lost over the last thirty years, with its emphasis on generic social work and social care. The emphasis on specialisation could also have its drawbacks. There is the risk of the pre-Seebohm duplication of services, for example, as families with multiple problems may again have a number of social workers involved. A bigger problem with the new arrangements is that the Home Office’s responsibilities in providing services for young offenders are still outside the Minister for Children’s remit, and should be included if an integrated approach is to be adopted. (Children’s Health Policy will remain with the Department of Health, though this is less of a problem in developing an integrated approach.) Nonetheless, as Paul Ennals, the Chief Executive of the National Children’s Bureau, has pointed out, the initiative “is a promising sign of the Government’s commitment to joining up services for children, which has been long needed”. The test will be the publication of the National Service Framework for Children. People have generally welcomed Margaret Hodge’s appointment as the Minister, if only because Paul Boateng had been seen as a likely choice. She has experience is this field in her years in the DfES, and she is a forceful person, but it remains to be seen what she will manage to achieve. We wish her success. If you are concerned about the way things are going and wish to help to shape future thinking, why not join CfC? Then you can have your say. Click here for an application form.