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Joined Up Thinking |
Editor - David Lane
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The Government has made
a lot of its intention to concentrate on task-centred co-operation
between departments, services and professions. This is no bad
thing. After all, it always used to be said that if a senior
civil servant wanted to slow up a new political development,
he set up an inter-departmental working party, as the rivalries
would ensure that nothing was ever agreed, while giving the impression
of hard work and activity. It was the meat of Yes Minister.
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There is no aspect of Government
policy where co-operation is needed more than in the care and
education of children. The Department for Education and Employment
has the most obvious interest, being responsible for schooling,
residential education, youth and community work and, in recent
months, the whole gamut of services for children in the early
years. The Department of Health has concern for adoption, fostering,
children's homes, social work and secure units. The Department
of Social Security has interests in dealing with the impact of
poverty on children. The Home Office deals with quite a number
of young offenders who are technically still children. The Ministry
of Defence employs boy and girl soldiers. The Department of the
Environment funds local government services and the Treasury
needs to be persuaded of the value of any development if funding
is to be available. Then, of course, there have been the Scottish
Office, the Welsh Office and the Northern Ireland Office, which
are now largely supplanted by the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish
Parliament, and whatever happens in Northern Ireland. The Foreign
Office deals with international treaties, including the Convention
on the Rights of the Child. In short, it is hard to think of
a Government Department which is unaffected. |
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Which is why we need a Minister
for Children, to ensure co-operation.
Despite the importance attached
by the Government to joined-up thinking, there are still gaps.
There is no national register for people working with children
and young people, - indeed, as yet, no registration at all except
for the local authority registers for childminders. There is
the risk that early years work, having been gathered together
under the aegis of the DfEE, will be split off from the DoH's
responsibilities for children in need. There are the gaps for
disabled children between services designed to meet their childhood
needs and their needs as adults; not only are these services
not seamless, they often gape at this seam. There is the gulf
between the penal system for adults and the social services,
which is rarely bridged despite the obvious links in terms of
children in care ending up in prison and the impact of prison
on families served by social services. Readers can probably supply
their own examples.
But before professionals become
complacent in pointing the finger at the Government, they should
look at themselves. Research has shown that the co-operation
between the different professions serving children and young
people is often very poor. We invest too much time in rivalry
and power games.
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One study suggested that professions
ganged upon each other. Psychologists and teachers despised residential
staff as under-trained and unprofessional. Teachers and childcare
staff dismissed psychologists as seeing and knowing very little
about what the children were really like through lack of contact.
Psychologists and care workers argued that they saw children
holistically while teachers saw only one aspect of the children's
lives.
If children and young people
are to receive the right services, delivered effectively to meet
their needs, we all need to be task-centred, putting the completion
of the task as the first priority. This means that we need to
get most job satisfaction from doing so, rather than from inter-professional
or inter-departmental games. |
Advertisement
Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England
Dr. Louise A. Jackson
Pub. Routledge
(look for the
review here shortly) |
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The divisions set up between professions,
services and departments are meant to ensure standards and enable
efficient implementation. Too often they become blocks and barriers.
It is no answer to destroy the structures as they are needed,
but we do need flexibility, permeability and co-operation if
we are to be successful in fulfilling our main goals.
February 2000
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