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What do you do if you ask a question and you don't get the answer you want? Keep quiet and carry on.At least that seems to be DfE's approach when it comes to an evidence base to support local authorities outsourcing complex and sensitive statutory children's social work. An independent evaluation of five pilots found no evidence that the act of outsourcing social work functions for looked-after-children led to better outcomes. The report was kept low profile and did not prevent the Government moving ahead to allow all local authorities to outsource these functions. The latest DfE consultation on extending this to virtually all remaining children's social work functions, including child protection, appeared with little fanfare, and will last just a few weeks. But it could lead to momentous change in how society protects vulnerable children. Sensitive statutory decision-making and intervention functions contracted out to the lowest bidder. Is this a line that should be crossed? Should decisions about removing children from their families end up in the hands of profit-making corporations, answerable to shareholders and stock market vagaries? Evidence from other public services and from closer to home shows that outsourcing can make services cheaper in the short-term, but at a heavy cost in deteriorating quality and accountability. In probation, where the government is privatising 70% of the service, high-risk offender management, court and multi-agency work will remain directly run by the public sector because of the risks involved. Yet no such qualms exist when it comes to children at risk. The Government message is mixed. In authorities where children's services are rated inadequate, it uses intervention powers to force outsourcing but now it also wants to position outsourcing as an innovation that high performing authorities should be pursuing. We believe there is no substitute for authorities asking their social workers how they think things should be done differently. Very few will say transfer us to an external contractor. Many will suggest practical changes that can be implemented in-house but most will say the real issue is 40% cuts to council funding on top of years of under-funding, when the number of children taken into care continues to climb, and when child poverty, family stress and debt create soaring need for support. If these measures are enacted it may be tempting for authorities to think they can solve the problems that take hold when workloads are unmanageable, stress rises and staff are over-stretched by outsourcing the whole lot of it. But that would be neither realistic nor responsible. Serious cases tell us time and again that children's social work needs more joined-up working and close accountability – not the fragmentation and dilution of oversight that outsourcing will bring. Helga PIle is trade union Unison's national officer for social workers

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Outsourcing children's services will come at heavy cost

By Helga Pile | 07 May 2014

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