Scrap "unhelpful" assessment timescales, says Munro child protection review

The government should scrap the statutory requirement on local authorities for completing assessments within “often artificial” set timescales as part of a drive to reduce top-down targets, the Munro review of frontline child protection has recommended in its final report.

The move would allow social work professionals to give equal weight to helping children, young people and families as well as assessing their problems, the report said.

Professor Eileen Munro, who led the review into frontline child protection services, said a one-size-fits-all approach was preventing local areas from focusing on the child.

The academic called for the government and local authorities to “operate in an open culture, continually learn from what has happened in the past, trust professionals and give them the best possible training”.

Prof. Munro argued that previous reforms had been well-intentioned but had led to a tick-box culture. As a result there had been too much of a focus on how authorities had carried out certain processes and procedures, rather than the end result for the children themselves.

Key recommendations from the review include:

• The government should revise both the statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children and The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, and their associated policies. Such a revision would – amongst other things – distinguish the rules that are essential for effective working together, from guidance that informs professional judgment. It would also remove the distinction between initial and core assessments and the associated timescales in respect of those assessments, “replacing them with the decisions that are required to be made by qualified social workers when developing an understanding of children’s needs and making and implementing a plan to safeguard and promote their welfare”
• The inspection framework should examine the contributions of all local services, including health, education, police, probation and the justice system to the protection of children
• Local services that work with children and families should be “freed from unhelpful government targets, national IT systems and nationally prescribed ways of working” and be able to re-design services “that are informed by research and feedback from children and families, and that pay more attention to the impact on children’s safety and welfare”
• There should be a change of approach to Serious Case Reviews (SCRs), with a stronger focus on understanding the underlying issues that made professionals behave the way they did and what prevented them from being able properly to help and protect children. “The current system is too focused on what happened, not why”. Local Safeguarding Children Boards should be required to use a ‘systems approach’ for SCRs, and an individual trained in this method should be made available to them
• There should be a new duty on all local services to coordinate an early offer of help to families who do not meet the criteria for social care services. This could address problems before they escalate to child protection issues
• Ofsted inspections of children’s services should add more weight to feedback from children and families, directly observe social workers’ interaction with children and families, and pay more attention to whether children have benefited from the help given
• Each local authority should designate a Principal Child and Family Social Worker. This person would report the views and experiences of the front line to all levels of management. A Chief Social Worker should be created in Government to advise on social work practice.

Prof. Munro said: “A one-size-fits-all approach is not the right way for child protection services to operate. Top down government targets and too many forms and procedures are preventing professionals from being able to give children the help they need and assess whether that help has made a difference.

“That is why I am recommending that unhelpful targets for completing assessments within a set timescale are removed. Professionals should instead concentrate on making good quality assessments that really focus on delivering the right help for the child, and checking whether that help has improved the child’s life.”

She said that inspection systems needed to be fit for purpose if handing local areas more freedom was to succeed. “That is why I have been working with Ofsted to look at how the criteria they use can be better focused on the experiences of children, young people and their families.”

Prof. Munro added: “Whilst reducing prescription is a key theme of my recommendations, it is important to keep rules that help local services work together better.”

She said that professionals in social services, health, education and the police needed to know what to expect of each other. The new duty on local services to coordinate early help for families was therefore vital to prevent less severe problems escalating to neglect or abuse.

Prof. Munro said: “We’re not going to solve the current problems overnight. Child protection is one of the most complex and crucial areas for public services. The responsibility doesn’t just fall to social workers, but is shared by other services that are there to help children.”

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said he welcomed Prof. Munro’s “thorough” analysis of the problems of the child protection system.

“It is now up to the government and the children’s sector to work together to look at the recommendations in detail and assess the implications of their implementation in practice for the long term, not as a short term fix,” he said. A response to the recommendations will be published later this year.