The Politics of Children's Services Reform

Re-examining Two Decades of Policy Change

Purcell, Carl, Carl Purcell

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781447348764
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447348795
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on unique access to prominent policy makers including ministers, senior civil servants, local authority directors, and the leaders of children's sector NGOs, Purcell re-examines two decades of children's services reform under both Labour and Conservative-led governments.

He closely examines the origins of Labour's Every Child Matters programme, the Munro review and more recent Conservative reforms affecting child and family social workers to reassess the impact of high profile child abuse cases, including Victoria Climbié and Baby P, and reveal the party political drivers of successive reform.

1

What drives children’s services reform?

Introduction

This chapter reflects on the existing literature on children’s services reform and makes the case for further research following a different approach. Two overarching narratives on children’s services reform can be identified in the existing literature. Both of these narratives emphasise the importance of contextual factors: the first highlights the role of the media and the significance of child abuse inquiries and scandals; and the second points towards the importance of the broader socio-economic context of the English welfare system. It is argued that neither of these perspectives takes full account of tensions and contradictions in children’s policy or the range of interests involved in policymaking. The chapter also draws on competing theoretical perspectives on contemporary British policymaking to provide a guide for this research. An overview of the research design and process is provided in the final section.

Child abuse inquiries and scandals

Inquiries into the apparent failings of local welfare agencies are now commonplace (Stanley and Manthorpe, 2004). In recent decades, welfare reform has often followed scandals generated by media coverage of inquiry findings and the ensuing public outrage generated. Butler and Drakeford (2005: 5) comment that ‘Scandals are the policy equivalent of the earthquake; they are a powerful signal that change is occurring, or that the pressure for change has reached unsustainable levels.’ Children’s services reform in England has been closely associated with scandals that have followed the publication of inquiries into serious cases of child abuse. Thus, Stafford et al (2012: 31) argue that ‘the media has been and remains one of the main drivers of system change’. In Warner’s (2015: 2, emphasis in original) view, ‘emotions can be seen as the driving force behind policy and practice’. From this perspective, policymakers and professionals working in children’s services are compelled to respond to the public anger and grief generated by media coverage of inquiries.

The Maria Colwell inquiry in 1974 (Secretary of State for Social Services, 1974) has been consistently identified as having marked a turning point for social services and the social work profession (Parton, 1985; Butler and Drakeford, 2012). Maria was murdered in 1973 after having suffered an extended period of abuse at the hands of her mother’s partner, William Kepple. The inquiry highlighted the failure of multiple agencies and professionals to share information and work together to better protect Maria. However, media coverage focused predominantly on the failings of the social services department and the social workers involved in the case. The political response challenged the broad welfare focus of social service departments, established following the Seebohm Report (Seebohm Committee, 1968), as well as the trust placed in social work professionals. The reforms that followed ‘changed the face of social work practice irrevocably in so far as social work was to be an extraordinarily closely “managed” profession from this point on’ (Butler and Drakeford, 2012: 174). Moreover, it was from this point that child and family social work started to emerge as a distinct specialism supporting a strong child protection focus in England (Parton, 1985, 2014; Butler and Drakeford, 2012).

Over the last 20 years, two high-profile cases stand out for the volume and ferocity of media coverage, as well as the political reforms that they have come to be associated with. The first of these was the case of Victoria Climbié. Victoria died in the London borough of Haringey in 2000 after suffering months of horrific abuse. She had been known to multiple statutory and charitable agencies across London. The Victoria Climbié inquiry (Lord Laming, 2003) uncovered familiar failings in inter-agency working. Media coverage again focused upon the failings of the social workers involved in Victoria’s case. Butler and Drakeford (2005: ch 11) comment that the Victoria Climbié inquiry also provoked serious debate about child welfare services nationally. The inquiry itself included a series of seminars with representatives of the children’s services sector, who were invited to provide feedback on proposals for reform. Labour’s ECM Green Paper (HM Government, 2003) and the subsequent Children Act 2004 were presented as the government’s direct response to Lord Laming’s report. Simon and Ward (2010: xi) argue that ECM was ‘one of the biggest social policy initiatives of the post-war years, affecting all aspects of the lives of children and their families: education, social services and health’. ECM applied a broad understanding of child welfare that extended well beyond child protection, leading to major structural changes in the organisation of local services. Biehal (2019) argues that ‘the official inquiry into the killing of Victoria Climbié led to a major overhaul of child welfare policy’.

However, the broader approach introduced under ECM was challenged following media reporting of the Baby P case. Baby P (later identified as Peter Connelly) was killed in 2007 while in the care of his mother and her partner. Like Victoria, he was known to various agencies in Haringey, including the new children’s services department. The case was first reported publicly following the conviction of Baby P’s mother and her partner in November 2008. Again, media reporting focused on the failings of the social workers involved, as well as the Director of Children’s Services (DCS) Sharon Shoesmith. However, the volume and tone of media coverage surpassed that of previous cases. The Baby P case generated an unprecedented level of public anger and clamour for reform (Jones, 2014; Parton, 2014: ch 5; Warner, 2015; Shoesmith, 2016). Responding to significant political and public pressure, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls announced a new review by Lord Laming and the establishment of a Social Work Task Force (SWTF). These steps were notable because they marked a departure from the broader approach of ECM. Lord Laming’s (2009) review focused specifically on child protection services. The establishment of the SWTF offered an implicit acknowledgement that the reform of social work had not been sufficiently prioritised by the government. Stafford et al (2010: 79) argue that the Baby P case pushed the ‘system to safeguard children in England back in the direction where it came from towards a more narrow focus on child protection’.

In Warner’s (2015: 3) view, the Baby P case marked ‘a step-change in the intensity of the cycle of crisis and reform’. She introduces the concept of emotional politics to explain the ferocity of media coverage and the political response that this was seen to generate. Warner (2015: 12) explains that ‘Emotional engagement by politicians can be understood as indicative of a deeper malaise in politics and the democratic process…. Matters of principle have diminished in their importance in terms of the struggle for parties to differentiate themselves and gain political advantage.’ The concept highlights the way in which contemporary politicians respond to, and mobilise, public displays of anger and grief in order to seek public approval. Warner (2015: ch 4) analyses a speech made in 2013 by Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education, to illustrate how emotional politics has shaped recent shifts in children’s services policy. In this speech, Gove promotes the swifter removal of children from abusive parents and carers, challenging policies that emphasise the importance of working with families. Gove cites a series of high-profile child abuse cases, including Baby P, to make his point. For Warner (2015: 76), the ‘emotional politics at work’ is exemplified by Gove’s binary discourse on child protection in which a more interventionist approach is presented as morally superior. The speech also ‘reflects the political necessity of always being, or appearing to be, in control in the face of a consistent stream of failures, scandals and disasters’ (Warner, 2015: 79).

Children’s services and neoliberalism

A second narrative on children’s services reform emphasises the importance of the socio-economic context of children’s policy. The development of the English child protection system following the Maria Colwell inquiry coincided with the onset of a fiscal crisis and the fracturing of the post-war social-democratic consensus in the mid-1970s. Criticism of the broad remit of social services departments, and the levels of trust placed in social work professionals, formed part of a wider critique of spending on welfare services and the power of public sector professionals. This culminated in the election of the Thatcher-led Conservative government in 1979 and the emergence of a neoliberal approach to economic and social policy. Policy developments since Maria Colwell, including responses to subsequent high-profile inquiries, are seen to have been influenced (or constrained) by neoliberal ideology. Rogowski (2011: 922) pinpoints ‘the ideological changes of the last thirty years being at the root of social work’s current crisis’. Lee (2014: 2136) argues that ‘There should be no underestimation of the extent to which the neo-liberal orthodoxy has penetrated the daily experience of social work.’

The imprint of neoliberal ideology is detected in concerted attempts to limit professional autonomy. The introduction of private sector management techniques, including performance targets, financial planning and competency frameworks, is cited as evidence of a new ‘managerialism’ in the UK public sector (Clarke and Newman, 1997). The dominance of managerialism, and thus the de-professionalisation of practice, has been a recurring theme in children’s social work research (Harris, 1998; Jones, 2001; Munro, 2004; White et al, 2008; Ferguson and Woodward, 2009; Broadhurst et al, 2010a, 2010b; Dominelli, 2010; Wastell et al, 2010; Rogowski, 2016). For Munro (2004), the purpose of introducing new processes and management controls was to try to make social work ‘auditable’. Butler and Drakeford (2012: 198) suggest that the culmination of this has been the development of the Ofsted inspection regime. On the other hand, Rogowski (2016: 109) argues that neoliberal-inspired reforms have also been designed to ‘imitate market relationships’ and thereby ensure that social workers are ‘engrossed in the bracing competitive stimulus of market forces’. Jones (2015, 2019) argues that the ‘end game’ has turned out to be the privatisation of child protection and social work.

Neoliberalism is also associated with a shift from universal/collective welfare provision towards targeted services and more punitive state interventions in family life. Levitas (2005) argues that neoliberal approaches to social policy are informed by a ‘moral underclass’ perspective on poverty and life chances. This emphasises the behavioural deviances of individuals and families while denying the relevance of social and economic inequalities. Thus, in recent decades, social policy has focused on the development of surveillance technologies and interventions designed to create ‘responsible’ (Featherstone et al, 2014: 24–26; Liebenberg et al, 2015) and ‘resilient’ (Garrett, 2016) citizens. A ‘new punitiveness’ (Garrett, 2009a: 19) in social policy is reflected in policies that prioritise protecting the community from ‘problem’ families. In this context, Featherstone et al (2014: 22) argue that social work has taken on ‘a role in risk regulation and as expert mediator for problematic populations and vulnerable people’. Rogowski (2011: 928) argues more forcefully that ‘what remains of social work is increasingly tied to a system primarily concerned with the management of risk by controlling the behaviour of young people who represent a threat to the wider community’. Parton (2014: 139) connects children’s services reform with ‘a clear agenda to establish … an authoritarian neo-liberal state’.

Furthermore, analysis of the socio-economic context of children’s services policy has tended to downplay the relevance of ideological differences between Labour and Conservative-led governments. Tony Blair’s claim that the Labour government was committed to pursuing a ‘Third Way’ in British politics is widely dismissed as a rhetorical device used to mask an underlying commitment to economic and social policies first introduced by the Conservatives (Ferguson and Woodward, 2009: 41–2; Garrett, 2009a: 14; Rogowski, 2011: 922). Ferguson and Woodward (2009: 35) comment that ‘the UK has borne the brunt of efforts by both Conservative and New Labour politicians to marginalise the role of the state in dealing with social problems and to introduce a business agenda to welfare services’. Rogowski (2011: 924) goes further, arguing that ‘New Labour out Toried the Tories by consolidating the Conservatives’ reforms so that social work was drawn deeper into managerial, market-oriented ways of thinking and practising’. Garrett (2009a) does acknowledge that Labour’s reforms to children’s services included some progressive elements, marking a departure from Conservative policies. However, he is ultimately dismiss...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Sir Paul Ennals
• Introduction
• 1 What drives children’s services reform?
• Part I Children’s services reform under the Labour government (1997–2010)
• Part II Children’s services reform under the Coalition and Conservative governments (2010–19)
• Conclusion: the politics of children’s services reform
• References
• Index