At What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care (WWEICSC), we focus on using evidence to understand what’s likely to improve outcomes for children.
The Government’s recently published implementation plan, in response to last year’s Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, includes some promising commitments.
I welcome the ambition that ‘every child and family who needs it will have access to high-quality help’.
However, there’s a lack of clarity on exactly what the Government means by ‘good-quality family support’, as well as the steps needed to make sure it’s available.
We also shouldn’t underestimate the efforts and resources that will be needed to make sure the strongest and best-evidenced interventions are offered as part of family help.
We know high-quality, carefully targeted support can help families to stay together, mitigate the impact of stress and adversity, and help children to thrive.
The approach of developing tailored and targeted ‘pathfinders’ on family help and other reforms in 12 local areas is a positive one. These pathfinders need to include robust pilots and evaluations throughout, with time for reflection and learning before changes are rolled out nationwide.
It’s important not to start implementing interventions across the country without first establishing that those interventions work to improve outcomes.
The proposals to set a clear national strategy for children’s social care, with clear accountability, fair funding and a focus on a learning loop for improvement with transparent data, are also helpful.
Providing a clear position about the goals of children’s social care is an important step, and can be achieved through a new National Children’s Social Care Framework.
Similarly, the move towards developing more consistent metrics for capturing progress against these objectives is useful.
I also welcome the commitment to develop practice guides, as these have the potential to significantly strengthen practice if backed by policy and funding.