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The Government’s big idea for child welfare – Sure Start – requires different public sector constituencies to work closely together, reports David Walker.

With its cry of “education, education, education”, New Labour made children a focus of its attention before it attained power. Now, midway through its second term in office, policy is shifting towards other aspects of children’s lives: their development in the critical early years from birth to three and protection from abuse at the hands of adults.

A minister, Margaret Hodge, has been given “all round” responsibility for children and she is already pressing Chancellor Gordon Brown for new commitments to State support for child care. Extra money has already gone into expanding one of the most ambitious “interventions” by the State in children’s lives – the Sure Start programme. This focuses on run down estates, bringing health visitors, social and community workers together to focus resources on young children in need, to try to equip them better to take advantage of educational opportunities after the age of four.

But, with the Treasury warning that 2004 is going to see budgets squeezed, spending on the early years may be purchased only with cuts in programmes for teenagers, such as Connexions, the £1.5bn scheme for school drop outs and young people with problems. Not for the first time, an ambitious Government runs the risk of inflating expectations while not committing sufficient money to deliver in every part of the country. Can the possibility of a child being abused by adults ever be ruled out?

Bold Programme
The new language is certainly grandiose. Every child is entitled to expect “staying safe, being healthy, experiencing enjoyment and achievement at school” leading to each child making “a positive contribution to society’s wellbeing”.

To secure those objectives, a major bureaucratic overhaul is under way, reaching right across the NHS and local government. No official whose work touches children’s lives will escape some redefinition of responsibilities. Generic social services departments are on their last legs. Many local authorities will create new children’s departments.

But, for all the energy that may go into the new programmes, the State’s dealings with children are still far from joined up. Home Secretary David Blunkett is cracking down on “anti-social behaviour” and in January gets extensive new powers. The Home Office’s approach to the nine year old found roaming the streets at 2am is, with new child safety and anti social behaviour orders in tow, likely to be tough-minded, some would say punitive.

Children in one neck of the policy woods are groomed to be champion exam passers, with all the stresses and strains of competitive exams. In another, children are smothered with attention, intended to reduce the risk of their coming to harm when they use the internet or play in the streets.

Heart of the Approach
At the heart of the Government’s new approach is Every Child Matters, a Green Paper published in September, representing the Government’s response to the Climbie case: a child sent by her parents in the Ivory Coast to the UK, into the care of a relative in London, who was murdered aged eight. Lord Laming, a former chief inspector of social services, carried out one of those big formal inquiries that have punctuated social policy since the early 1970s. He found failings by the police, social services and local government managers at large. “The common threads,” says the Government, “were poor co-ordination, a failure to share information, the absence of anyone with a strong sense of accountability, and frontline workers trying to cope with staff vacancies, poor management and a lack of effective training.”

A lot of that has been said before. This time, says the Government, it will be different. Structures are changing. Integration will start at the top, with a new portfolio for Margaret Hodge to include children, family policy (from the former Lord Chancellor’s department) and parenting (transferred from David Blunkett).

Locally, “children’s trusts” are to be rolled out across England, joining health with family services and schooling; these are now being piloted in some three dozen local authorities. A key change will be common training and protocols for all professionals dealing with children – there are 2.8m in total. The reform depends critically on manpower. Last year some 48% of English local authorities with social services responsibilities reported problems in recruiting social workers for children.

Every child in England may be “tagged”. A new database for England’s 11m children is to be set up to integrate information hubs recording details of all local children, each of whom will get a unique identification number. Interestingly, while David Blunkett’s plans for an identity card for adults has been hugely controversial, this plan has so far met little opposition.

The remedy is confined, so far, to England. In Scotland, children’s services are already more integrated; Scotland never entirely bought into the “generic” approach to social work that came in the early 1970s. And Wales, which pioneered the post of children’s rights commissioner, also feels it is ahead of the English game.

Every local authority with social services responsibilities must appoint a new children’s director – “one person in charge, with the responsibility for improving children’s lives”. Practically, this will mean integrating education and children’s social services within town and county halls and probably also the creation of a new lead elected member for children. In principle the new administrative shell of the children’s trust will co-ordinate primary care and hospital work with children, and tie in youth offending teams and Connexions. But they will all keep their separate funding streams and the Home Office, for one, will not give up its youth justice empire without a fight.

Shift in Education Emphasis
The plan involves a major shift in emphasis within education. When Labour came to power, the emphasis was on attainment, focusing teachers on getting better results. Now an older welfare function which schools lost a generation ago is to be reinserted, with the creation of new social work posts based in schools. “Education” says Christine Davies, chief education officer of Telford and Wrekin council, “is the universal service” – so it is where the new approach should be rooted. But not all teachers, heads and governors will want what they may see as “dilution” of schools’ purposes.

Existing early years partnerships - led by councils but embracing the voluntary sector and private providers of child care – are to expand. Children below school age are to be cared for in new units attached to primary schools, while junior and secondary schools might “grow” new arms to augment existing breakfast clubs and after-school activities. But, again, some schools will not want babies on their premises.

Labour ministers also have yet to answer a fundamental question. The promise of this autumn’s green paper is that all children are to be covered by the new arrangements. But children “at risk” are only a tiny fraction. Only some 3% of all children and young people under the age of 18 are regarded by health and social services as in any kind of potential danger (of neglect as well as abuse).

Questions Remain
Are the new children’s trusts designed for this minority or do they herald a new, universal service? Will Mrs Hodge seek to offer free or subsidised child care to all families, not just those living in poorer areas?

This ambiguity has run through Labour’s approach to social policy and benefits. How far should they be targeted on lower income households; how far should they be available to everyone regardless of mean, in order to keep better off families happy? It is they, after all, who mainly pay for the welfare state.

David Walker writes for The Guardian

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