Children’s Well Being Bill – you can’t play Bazball with Children’s social care policy , its not cricket

There’s learning for all in children’s social care decision making from England losing a Test cricket match to Australia by playing Bazball, a high-risk, high-reward strategy with the bat and in the field.  Successful social policy has been characterised by more than ‘ Hit it hard, hit it big.’

There’s specific timely learning for Parliamentarians being asked  to decide the future of children’s social care on the Children’s Well Being and Schools Bill – you need more than one ‘Big idea’.

The legislation before Parliament is just that.

We need greater detail, understanding, insight, data, evidence.  DfE last week advised the Public Accounts Committee that it cannot provide these as they do not exist.

In such a circumstance Parliament must pause the progress of the Bill. Both Houses must not be ‘persuaded’ or pushed. The time for regret will be long, a hasty action has long-term consequences. 

Prevailing opinion sways politics but makes a poor foundation for policy. We need decisions made with sophistication not simplification.

The ‘Stable homes built on love’ meme shines like the Batsignal over the Houses of Parliament calling the Minister to the  Dispatch box. Its words and intent capture and dominate private thinking and public speaking, at the same time as skewering any alternative.

Dare to think or speak of anything other? A big broad alliance with disparate allegiances to the meme exists that trains its sights on any raising of an alternative or even a question. So those people with hesitancy ‘choose’ collaboration. Meanwhile the day when the alliance unravels, gets closer.  Alliances unravelling are messy affairs. It happens quickly, unstoppable, often because of undue haste at the start, things undone, unseen, unknown.

Looking dispassionately at ‘Stable homes, built on love’ and it reveals itself as proposing an exclusive sentimentality, love for some, but not all. Look closely, with this meme the further you travel from a stable family the more the love of society dwindles, at the very moment where care needs to increase the policy runs out of ideas and money.

It’s an on the nose bet but we really needed a spread bet and accumulator.  The ‘evidenced’ science of early intervention is not strong. Comparitor ideas needed researching and including in the Care Review from which the Bill comes, itself now out of date in its contents.

For example, the now published exhaustive study of global Residential Child Care research studies by Bruce Henderson offers such a comparitor. It needs to be taken into account.

The works of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory needs to be taken into account.

The now published international academics work needs to be taken into account

This is not argue against early intervention. It is necessary. The argument is that we will always need intensive and specialist non-family group care. Both need to be consistently driven forwards with sufficient funding.  Policy must remain progressing. It was estimated the 1989 Act would take 30 years, generational change is a sensible time frame. We never got there,  things got in the way, important people moved and governments changed.

What is being named as early intervention is a pale imitation of it. Two examples, breakfast clubs are not a minimum income for all; family hubs are not Sure Start.

Early intervention is being positioned as resolving the effects of poverty and deprivation at younger ages  deterring abuse, trauma, exploitation in later years.

That is a hypothesis not a finding. Experience suggests not with a differing set of factors.

‘Stable homes, built on love’ is so clearly seeking territorial ascendancy, all other ideas only in relation to this big idea. There is an impatience, the equivalent of ‘move fast and break things’, with a dash of the quixotic.

The thing about Bazball is that innings are short. That is not what we need for children’s social policy. Historically it grows incrementally, each builds on before.

The latest Test match shows us we should be wary of anything that tears the strip up and says ‘no more’.

Care needs soft hands, crafting an innings.  The Test match shows us policy without a safety net.  We need more than Plan A. We needs plans B to Z.

There are 2 great books on cricket CLR James ‘Beyond a boundary’ and Mike Brearley ‘On Leadership’. The former explains how you can get into a Bazball frame of mind, and the latter on the application of a strategy based on analysis and understanding.

We do not want children’s social care to be like The Ashes, “deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances.”