Pulling the plug on good enough residential child care - DCSF style

This was first posted on the goodenoughcaring website at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com on April 12th, 2010.
We have had a large and supportive response to our recent report of the damaging blow dealt to residential child care in England by the decision of the Department for Children, Schools and Families to cease funding the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care.

Some of us may have been present at the NCB conference in Birmingham in 2005 when Bruce Clark, then the Divisional Head of the Looked After Children Division in the Department of Education and Skills announced government funding of £731,000 to establish the NCERCC. It seemed then that residential child care had been provided with a strong platform from which to establish its place as a caring discipline.

Over a number of years the idea of the NCERCC was nurtured into being by a group of people and organisations with decades of practical experience, learning, research, development and management in residential child care. It is hard for us as residential child care workers not to feel a sense of humiliation when a consultancy organisation like Tribal with no depth of experience in our field is awarded such a powerful role in our work while the views of those whom we recognise as having deep insight of our professional discipline – residential child care - are dismissed.

Of course in a world dominated by a relatively small number of people seeking high financial rewards we understand that a large commercial consultancy like Tribal may claim expertise in anything in order to win a contract. To present a tender for a contract like the one Tribal has been awarded a commercial body can usually persuade an academic - with a curriculum vitae which suggests some interest in child care issues - to climb on board. We do not know if this is the case with Tribal, though its description of its current expertise does not include residential child care.

It may be that Tribal matters are a sideshow in this. The overwhelming majority of responses to our report identified the real villain of the piece as the DCSF. In pulling the plug on the NCERCC, not it seems despite of the latter's good work but, so it claims, because of it, DCSF is pulling the plug – in the way that its predecessors have done over many decades – on any informed and genuine intention to provide good enough residential child care. (Posted, April 12th, 2010).

Comments

Richard Rollinson writes, “Many of you will know I endorse the positions set out by Adrian Ward and Charles Sharpe on the goodenoughcaring website. After a conversation with John Kemmis, [of Voice for the Child in Care ] I have agreed to write to Paul Ennals at the National Children’s Bureau where NCERCC was based to emphasise the depth and intensity of the dismay felt by so many across our sector. Before NCERCC residential child care was seen as the "poor relation" of children's services and government/social policies. In light of all these comments, my communication to Paul will be brief, and forwarded with it will be the communications amongst ourselves to give it the reality and strong feeling it represents in our collective view. I am encouraged that neither a holiday period nor the start of an election has dimmed our strength of feeling”.

Adrian Ward comments, "I agree wholeheartedly with the concerns you have raised, and feel that DCSF has acted in a wholly destructive way towards NCERCC and the whole sector. There was no consultation whatsoever about the diversion of funds from NCERCC's remit into this 'Support and Challenge' programme, and as far as one can see DCSF is taking no responsibility for the consequences of its actions. NCERCC has helped to create and develop some outstanding projects such as the Children's Residential Network which have brought real value to young people by promoting and supporting good practice, and the risk is that this work will be lost, as I'm sure NCB doesn't have the money to continue any funding".


John Burton writes, "Politicians are guided by self-interested groups and have no idea of the results of their decisions. This doesn’t absolve them from responsibility. All government policy can be seen as a sophisticated system of denying accountability and passing it down to the lowest level possible – to people who are actually trying to do the work with commitment and belief. And the new legislation and guidance then makes it even more difficult to do the real work. Look at the Care Quality Commission response to the failure of inspection at the care home where Rachel Baker was convicted of manslaughter last week. It is high time we spoke out and I applaud your opinion piece".

Chris Taylor comments, " NCERCC has done well on what seems like quite a small budget, and residential care needs a unifying and professionalising voice. I know nothing about Tribal, but note that although they claim their "expertise spreads across many markets" they do not mention any form of childcare, let alone residential care. They do offer a range of services in education, perhaps a return to the old Children's Homes with Education model. I also doubt that NCERCC will be the only casualty of the desperate need to reduce both deficit and debt...residential care has always been a soft target".