The Future of Children’s Social Care

This report sets out a proposed blueprint to make children’s services more sustainable.

The role of partners and the regulator in enabling families to stay together
Responsibility for supporting and safeguarding children is shared across public sector partners; it is only with the involvement and commitment of local partners that the full benefits for children can be delivered. This offer of support is delivered by integrated teams under the leadership of the local authority, with each partner committing specialist resource as required. In this way, duplication of efforts and competition
for scarce specialist skills are avoided. Partnership working is explored further in Chapter 5.2: Aligned partnership working.
At a national level, given the extent to which inspection methods tend to drive practice and behaviours, going forward there is a greater role for the regulator to consider how inspection and measurement can best promote a culture which goes further to support children to return to families where safe to do so. This would likely see more focus, depth, and detail applied to reviewing permanence plans and whether reconnection and reunification to family, friends, or communities continues to be explored appropriately through a child’s time in care, without risking unsettling them. It would also need a different approach to risk: one which recognises the later-life impact on children of being separated from their families alongside the management of the shorter-term risks they face.
– The Future of Children’s Social Care

Read the report in full: HERE