Political leadership is key to making a difference
Ensuring local areas and services meet the needs of children and families is arguably one of the most important functions of local government.
This is why the LGA has developed a guide – specifically for council leaders – which has been shaped by current and former leaders, lead members and chief executives with experience of children’s services improvement.
As it notes, when things are working well, children’s services can be an area that doesn’t draw the political or corporate attention of council leadership. But if there are issues, these can escalate and unravel quickly.
Councils have statutory duties to keep children safe and to step in to offer support or look after them when they can’t be cared for safely at home, and to support educational excellence for all children and young people in their area.
This includes support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), a complex and growing area.
Demand for children’s services has been increasing rapidly, putting significant pressure on council budgets.
Two-thirds of councils cite spending on children’s services as the biggest short-term pressure facing local authorities, so getting it right is vital to ensure that children receive the best support and councils can effectively use their budgets.
Council leaders have to juggle competing priorities and demands for resources, but identifying and addressing issues in children’s services early is key.
The financial and reputational implications of a failure in children’s services would likely be council-wide and significant.
As leader, you should therefore have an understanding of the conditions for children’s services success and improvement, and your role in enabling them.
Council leaders should ensure that their lead member for children’s services is supported in their statutory role, their cabinet understands children’s services, and that consideration is given to the impact on children when decision-making and budget setting in other policy areas.
It’s also important to adopt a whole council approach.
Children’s services, including children’s social care, SEND and alternative provision, and youth justice services, can only thrive when supported by the whole council and its partners.
Leaders also have a crucial part to play in ensuring that all elected members support children and young people and understand and fulfil their role as ‘corporate parents’.
When children come into local authority care, corporate parenting means doing everything you can for every child in your care and every care leaver, to give them the opportunities that other children get.
Every councillor and officer of the local authority is a corporate parent with the statutory responsibility to act and care for that child in the same way that a good parent would.
All councillors should understand their corporate parenting responsibilities, and how they can fulfil them, but particularly councillors taking up roles on corporate parenting boards, scrutiny committees and cabinet.
As their community representatives, all councillors have a crucial role to play in doing all they can to support children in care to live meaningful and fulfilling lives, to believe in them and fight their corner.
As leader, you can model and champion active corporate parenting by setting the tone for political colleagues and relentlessly asking, and encouraging others to ask: ‘Would this be good enough for my child?’
Please read ‘Must know: the role of a council leader in improving outcomes for children’ in full on our website.