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A positive outlook for counties Debbie Ward The spring conference for the Association of County Chief Executives' (ACCE) takes place this year at a time when local government has been a consistent feature in national headlines. As a sector we have consistently delivered and supported transformational public services despite the cash pressures, and has never been as big a political-point scorer when it comes to making the case for additional funding. This year has seen a change and the often rehearsed ‘Graph of Doom' has delivered, with Northamptonshire, coupled with subsequent warnings from some other local authorities, bringing into focus the financial plight many councils find themselves in. A recent survey of ACCE members showed that the priority for this year is financial savings, adult social care and children's services. While national and international agendas, such as housing, education, economic growth, and Brexit, remain firmly on the ACCE agenda, the results were indicative of the pressures being faced on a daily basis by county chief executives and has guided the Association's commitment to influence the Fair Funding Review. No doubt these demanding issues will get a good airing but as county colleagues gather this week, we will be working towards a much stronger and positive outlook for our areas, putting service before sovereignty in our thinking. The conference kicks off with tough discussions on finance. Quite simply, there is not enough money for the sector. Although austerity has inspired innovation and service redesign, we aim to capitalise on the renewed national interest in local government to deliver sustainable funding and an effective distribution of resources. The continuing financial uncertainty after 2020 is creating severe concern, and while ACCE strongly welcomed the direction of travel in the recent consultation on fair funding, this alone won't solve our financial pressures. With Melanie Dawes, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, in attendance, I am sure colleagues will press for an update on the review, business rates, and her department's preparations for the Spending Review. The key to achieving sufficiency and certainty in funding won't be simply asking for more money – but showing how greater resources spent effectively in our communities can make a positive difference. It is the successful delivery of large-scale transformation in county authorities which leads 38% of respondents to our recent survey of chief executives to state their financial situation was ‘manageable', at least in the short-term. The sector needs to do more to articulate to the public our track record on delivery and share experiences and practice across the sector. We look forward to a session this week exploring how this is taking place in children's services. Another particularly good illustrator of locally-led innovation is how the £2bn social care money has been invested to reduce delayed transfers of care – with real, tangible results on the ground and significant reductions in delays. We look forward to discussing with senior officials how proposals in the Social Care Green Paper can provide sustainable funding, but crucially, a better pathway towards integration with health partners which is prevention focused and democratically accountable to local residents. More widely, growth, devolution and housing also feature prominently on the agenda. Despite not being a statutory responsibility for the majority of county chief executives, housing and planning has come out as a significant priority for ACCE, with two-thirds in our recent research ranking it as a high or top priority. With this clearly the government's number one domestic agenda, planning and housing is another area where status quo isn't delivering and cannot be sustained. Instead, we must look towards innovative housing initiatives with counties directly building homes in partnership with our district colleagues, housing associations and private sector partners. Alongside this, we also need a closer alignment between planning and infrastructure, which the County Councils' Network has been calling for. We look forward to discussing this, and the priorities of the renamed "Homes England", with its chief executive, Nick Walkley. The conference concludes with a panel session exploring how devolution and reform can be taken forward in our areas; either through structural reform or ‘Strategic Authorities' in a retained but reformed two-tier arrangement. Both could provide reformed governance for improved efficiency, integration and regional growth, but given politics locally and within Parliament, chief executives will discuss how the promised ‘common devolution framework' could frame a sensible, evidence-based discussion amongst sector colleagues. Our spring conference gives us all the ability to come together and get access to key decision makers; we'll make sure its time well spent. Just as important for me is the time to reflect together, for peer to peer learning and to draw breath and look around and celebrate the achievements of our dedicated and creative teams who continue to put communities at the heart of everything we do. I look forward to welcoming colleagues and speakers to Dorset this week. Debbie Ward is chair of the Association of County Chief Executives and chief executive of Dorset CC Scale matters in turning around children's services John Coughlan This week I have privilege to lead a session of fellow county chief executives with Isabelle Trowler, chief social worker for children and families, reflecting on the funding and performance challenges facing local government in children's services. First, we should be in no doubt there is not enough money to support the needs of our growing population of children in need. All authorities – both urban and rural, big and small – must be agreed the funding crisis in children's services is real, immediate and grave for all of us. But Government does have a point when it claims there is no direct correlation between relative funding and relative performance. I'm convinced that's because the ‘anatomy' of failure in children's services is much more complicated than the money. Some years ago in Hampshire we conducted an in-depth local analysis of childhood poverty. In ‘leafy' Hampshire's 1.3 million population, including well over 300,000 children, 80% live in urban communities. But our study concluded that the worst place to be a poor child in Hampshire was the beautiful New Forest. All that beauty is scant reward if you happen to be deprived and isolated, if you can't afford transport and all of the services you so desperately need are so thinly spread. But most importantly, if you're a child in poverty and in need, that tends to be absolute in your own experience, regardless of our relative professional arguments. What does this mean for performance? While our own performance has been sustained we believe we are coming to understand the anatomy of inadequate children's services after five years of being deeply immersed in sector-led improvement in the Isle of Wight, Torbay and now Buckinghamshire. For all the concerns about Ofsted, we think they call inadequacy well – the authorities we have worked with have been failing their children. The ‘inadequate' category has no respect for the type of authority – urban, rural, large or small – the challenges are the same and there are no causes for complacency. That said, while any authority can fall into the category, our experience is increasingly telling us that getting out of inadequate – achieving and especially sustaining the kind of performance our vulnerable children deserve – scale does matter. I liken the Ofsted category to a deep and steep-sided ditch. Anyone can fall into it, but the smaller you are the harder it is to get the traction to scramble out and stay out. That's partly why the solutions we have brokered for Isle of Wight and now Torbay with Plymouth, have involved long-term partnerships that create stable scale. So, this is not a crude plug for counties in children's services. It is an unashamed reflection that childhood poverty and deprivation have no regard for our borders. And a reflection that, as times get inevitably tougher, we need to grapple collectively with this point that size does matter. John Coughlan is lead ACCE advisor for children's and education and chief executive of Hampshire CC Leadership in difficult times Becky Shaw Being a chief executive in current times can feel rather like sitting an exam, or perhaps more accurately both continual assessment and exams. As the county chief executives gather this week there is a strong sense of preparation for the future taking place. Plans are being crafted, budget frameworks devised, likely success of others' approaches being assessed, personal resilience being strengthened, and much thoughtful contemplation being given to ambitions and possible poor results. How to be the best we can be under pressure with restricted room for manoeuvre is the current core subject. It's a test not just for senior officers and elected members, especially those up for election on 3 May, but for everyone providing leadership across councils and including our public, private and voluntary sector partners. For those of us in counties our curriculum is similar to others but is particularly shaped by the high proportion of demand led social care which dominates our budgets, the co-mingling of our futures with local health economies, the geographical scale of our places, the complexity of our partnerships, and the challenges of our infrastructure and economies. Recent events in Northamptonshire and potential structural changes in Dorset and Buckinghamshire also inform our exam preparations. We look forward to welcoming our guests and talking with them not only about their specialist subjects but also about how they are tackling their own leadership challenges. We are determined to focus our time and energy on what we want to learn from our guests and to explore what we can do together. We will concentrate on making better use of the collective experience and insights already in the room, resisting the risk of spending time going over what we all already know. We head to Dorset with a determination to be better organised and more focused, to explore with our peers what the evolving and complex syllabus means, to steal some ideas and to try to work out what success means. What does a decent pass look like? Who is marking our homework? Most importantly of all, as the newly appointed, the established and the returning gather together we will talk, laugh and enjoy the support, reassurance and challenge that being with those sitting the same exams always brings. And then return to our places and be the best leaders we can be. Becky Shaw is chief executive of East Sussex CC and lead ACCE adviser for leadership and transformation

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CHILDREN'S SERVICES

A time for leadership and reflection

By Debbie Ward, Becky Shaw, John Coughlan | 01 May 2018

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