To the fullest – South East go further faster in developing needs – meeting regional care cooperatives
NCERCC strongly encourage the South East Regional Care Cooperative to take its development further and faster to overcome their recognition that “The link is sometimes weak between our statistics and the questions we’re really trying to answer”, and, that the “data points help us identify some troubling questions, but they don’t help us find answers”.
With NCERCC having been stating this for 2 decades it is good to have this affirmed by a government funded project involving local authorities.
A Regional Care Cooperative publicly demonstrating its learning from experience is a positive sign and it is a clear message to government that the datasets to be used by all local authorities need changing. We know how to make a substantial step forward with what is required. That this will require a change and a move onwards from the Sufficiency duty to the concept of Specificity is signalled too.
Once we are assessing and identifying needs through a needs audit to start with and then routinely at the point of accommodation using needs profiling tools we will be able to match needs to places as we will have data that tells us how much of what we need and where we need it. We will have data for trend forecasting and be able to plan the responses children need in granular detail. Specificity is the way forwards.
Specificity means effective care and this means efficient spending.
This will meet the South East’s recognition that what is needed is “a comprehensive data transformation programme to ensure that analytical tools in the region meet the needs of our changing context”. Being ‘analytical’ also means looking at other terminology, the South East still use the term ‘complex’ in their briefing rather than the more progressive term from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory work on DOLS of ‘co-occurring’. The term complex is a catch all and blurs the necessary granularity that should underpin matching of need to placement.
This recognition combines with the concerns NCERCC raised in a letter to government regarding the trajectory of Regional Care Cooperatives as explained in recent on-line events. Our letter was prompted by the use of the term ‘the art of the possible’ in relation to the use of needs profiles and needs audits as the basis for planned provision. To be pragmatic sometimes requires you to be ambitious.
NCERCC has not been the only people worrying over the datasets used for children in care. A group of academics (Children’s Social Care Data User Group CSCDUG – Children’s Social Care Data User Group ) have been working on a new dataset. From recent research publications regarding children in care NCERCC see that these can be made stronger through insights from those with responsibilities for practice operationally, from the ‘careface’.
One example is that the annual 903/251 return is not fit for purpose, the SDQ is insufficient in addressing higher level needs. So, we can say that it is not only the South East that has to look at its datasets but this is urgent nationally.
NCERCC are aware that the scaling up of complexity comes with a cost and consequences.
The consequence of knowing more was met in one discussion NCERCC was involved in with a response that unequivocally stated that needs audits and working from granularity was not advised as it would identify more children and the need for more provision. With the South East recognition clearly we have moved on from this position.
The costs will come through the use of needs profiles as an essential social work/care practice. There will be greater expectations of its use in social work assessment and in commissioning and procurement ensuring matching of need. It will require remodelling Placement Request Forms, already some local authorities have done so with good effect. It will mean providers working with a sometimes heightened knowledge and practice. The care planning will be evidence/observation based. It will mean understanding that the residential child care sector is not one market but a series of interlinked expert small sectors. It will mean costs of the care of individual children will be according to their need, where everyone gets what is right for them (an essential of therapeutic child care), not unit costs, where everyone gets what is provided (an inhibitor of therapeutic child care).
We need the South East to act and lead the way dispelling any scepticism that may linger as to the use of needs assessment.
We need to hold the accountability with the South East for their onward development as we need also to contribute to the South East development, for example there are sound evaluations from practice as to the needs profiles that work in practice (see in particular SIRCC Journal Assessing social and emotional difficulties of children in residential care settings: A systematic review of strengths-based measures Danielle Day, Sarah Elgie, Christopher Robinson – this concludes the BERRI and ACA with strengths supplements).
We need to make steady progress whilst holding on to further and faster. NCERCC are aware of just how many systems interlink and that they are all built on the ‘way we do things now’. There has been enormous investment in these systems. We rely on these systems now so any change needs careful thinking through, however, the South East show that to continue as we are is to continue to investment in the past, and we need to invest in the future.
We need to do different. Some already have started, we have already existing examples of the benefits of using needs assessments. (see NCERCC A local authority: development of a range of homes (Derived from analysis of Placement Referral Forms (committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/132795/pdf/) and the work of Haringey in their Placement Request Forms.
The task is clear, and the need is urgent. So, we cannot allow ourselves to entertain any dilution or redefining. We commit to a new future of providing the fullest need- led responses.
The way we do things from here on will be different.
