Social Services ©James Morrisson 2009

Social Services

Background

Until the early 20^th century such social welfare services as existed were provided on an ad hoc basis by charities and voluntary foundations. However, growing social reform saw the introduction of a more widespread and coordinated system of welfare provision. The main landmarks in the emergence of this new form of local welfare were:

• 1968 – Issue of welfare provision highlighted by report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Services (otherwise known as the Seebohm Report)
• 1970 – Social services departments formed from the merger of the pre-existent health and welfare and children’s departments by the Local Authorities Social Services Act. The new departments worked closely with existing local housing authorities (normally a department within the council) and the NHS, and covered families, children, people with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly
• 1990 – National Health Service and Community Care Act introduces new system of community care – with more emphasis than ever before placed on the role of local social services departments. The controversial “care in the community” policy saw more emphasis placed on the use of the private sector to provide day-care and outreach services for the elderly and mentally ill, as opposed to closed institutions like homes and NHS hospitals

Children’s Services

Child protection has for many years been overseen collaboratively by the following authorities:

• Social services departments
• Police
• NSPCC
• NHS trusts
• Local education authorities

These various agencies traditionally liaised through an area review committee (ARC), which decided on the child protection procedures each of them should follow and carries out reviews of cases when these procedures appear to have failed to prevent non-accidental injury. Information was collated and shared between them through a child protection register maintained by ARC.

            All this changed, though, with the advent of the Children Act 2004, which introduced sweeping changes to children’s social services - taking them out of the overarching social services departments responsible for adults as well, and creating a dedicated children’s services unit under each county council and unitary authority, presided over by a new director of children’s services. The radical overhaul – part of a Government initiative dubbed ‘Every Child Matters’, after the title of an independent report published by former social worker Lord Laming – followed the scandal surrounding the death of Victoria Climbie, an eight–year-old girl who died of hypothermia while in the care of her foster parents, after enduring two years of torture at their hands that had somehow escaped the notice of professionals.

            The establishment of children’s services departments was to be only the beginning. As of, local authorities have been required to set up children’s trusts – inter-disciplinary teams of professionals from all areas involved in child welfare, including child social workers, paediatricians, and school teachers. In place of the child protection registers of old, children’s services departments were required to set up a new integrated children’s system for sharing information between professionals (thereby ensuring that early warning signs of abuse or neglect were picked up at the soonest opportunity). All those other than top-rated CPA/CAA authorities also have to publish periodic children and young people’s plans (CYPPs). Meanwhile, local safeguarding children’s boards (LSCBs) were formed in each area, chaired by senior local authority officers, to ensure the best possible coordination between the various agencies and authorities involved in promoting child welfare.

A national children’s commissioner – currently Professor Al Aynsley-Green, a former national clinical director for children in the Department of Health – was also appointed to drive through changes on the ground across the country.

Types of care order, and the role of local authorities in child welfare

Prior to the 2004 act, the biggest single reform of child protection legislation for many decades came in the guise of the Children Act 1989, which brought together the public and private law on the care, protection and upbringing of children, and stated that the paramount consideration when cases come to court should be a child’s welfare. It stipulated that court orders should only be made if doing so is better for the child’s welfare than not doing so. Under the 1989 act, courts can make four types of court order in relation to ‘children in need’:

• Residence order – deciding who a child should live with
• Contact order – allowing a child to have visits or contact with a named person
• Specific issue order – determining specific questions relating to the care of a child (e.g. which school they should attend)
• Prohibited steps order – forbidding specified actions by a parent in relation to a child

The broad duties of social services authorities in relation to children are as follows:

• To promote the upbringing of children by their families (wherever possible)
• A general duty to promote the welfare of children
• To pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the child
• To work in partnership with parents in the best interests of the child
• To provide accommodation for children if there is no person with parental responsibility for them; if the child is lost or abandoned; or because the person responsible is unable to provide care
• Advising, assisting and befriending children who leave their care – as well as providing financial assistance for accommodation

Parents who have entered into voluntary arrangements with the local authority to look after their children may withdraw them from this without giving notice.

           

Care and supervision of children

Before a court can make a care or supervision order it must be satisfied that the following grounds exist:

• A child is likely to suffer significant harm from receiving care of a standard below that which would be given by a reasonable parent
• That the child is beyond parental control

There are two types of orders governing child protection by social services authorities:

• Care orders give the social services authority parental responsibility for a child. But they must allow parents “reasonable access” to the child – unless there is an emergency or a court denies access. Care orders cannot be made for anybody 17 or over
• Supervision orders place children under the “supervision” of social services authorities, which then have a duty to advise, assist and befriend the child. The day-to-day supervisor of this process will be a social worker or, occasionally, a probation officer

Emergency protection of children

The 1989 act tried to strike a balance between the need to protect children from harm in emergencies and allowing aggrieved parents to challenge any action.

Under the act, if a court is convinced there is reasonable cause to believe a child might suffer “significant harm”, it can make an emergency protection order – giving the parents’ responsibilities to another person (normally the social services authority). These can only last eight days in the first instance, but can be extended to seven days if a court is satisfied the risk of harm still exists. Since the Family Law Act 1996, the emphasis has been on removing the source of danger - rather than removing the child (i.e. by making a non-molestation order).

Local authorities responsible for social services are now obliged to set up area child protection committees, following a succession of scandals about child abuse and neglect which went unnoticed until too late by local social services departments, police and health workers (e.g. the Victoria Climbie case in London). They are designed to promote “joined-up thinking” by all the various agencies involved in child protection, by drawing together representatives from each on the one body (i.e. social services departments themselves, the NSPCC, the NHS, police, youth groups, etc)

Providing Accommodation for Children in Need

The duties of social services departments to house children in need cover the following areas:

• To provide community homes (CHs) or foster homes for children looked after by them
• To restrict the liberty of children in their care – but only if given court approval through a three-month secure accommodation order (this can be renewed for up to six months at a time)

Until the Care Standards Act 2000 set up the National Care Standards Commission, social services authorities were also responsible for registering residential children’s homes provided by the private sector for profit. One the most stringent stipulations is that anyone prohibited from fostering children must not be involved in the management or finances of a registered children’s home – without the consent of the local authority.

Fostering

Ongoing care arrangements for children in the community (as opposed to children’s homes) can take one of two forms:

(a)   Fostering – a temporary arrangement, normally with a host family

(b)  Adoption – a permanent arrangement, which sees the individual or family approved as an adopter obtaining the legal status of parent(s)

Fostering can be arranged on a long- or short-term basis by social services authorities, voluntary agencies or privately. It is usually seen by local authorities as an alternative to their keeping a child in a community home. The procedure governing the vetting of foster parents is as follows:

• Official foster parents must be approved by the social services authority following investigation into their family lives, and medical and criminal backgrounds
• Anyone convicted of causing or permitting bodily harm to a child is barred from fostering – as, in most cases, is someone who lives in the same house as a person who has such a background
• A person who has had an order made against them to remove a child from their control is also barred from fostering
• Social workers retain the right to see foster children on request at regular intervals and can remove them from care at any time if they believe this is in the child’s interests. Such an action can prompt foster parents to apply to a court for a residence order

Adoption

By law, children can only be adopted through an adoption agency – either a social services authority or a voluntary adoption society approved by the Secretary of State. Not all agencies actually arrange placements themselves, but all of them carry out adoption assessments. There are two different adoption processes:

• Single-stage – A placement made with the full cooperation of the child’s natural parents results in an adoption order made by a court
• Two-stage – When a child’s natural parents object to their child being adopted, an adoption agency will have to apply to a court for a freeing order (at this stage, the parents of the child are often not identified – a fact which has been known to aggravate the courts)

Who can adopt?

In theory, anyone over 21 is legally entitled to adopt a child, but in practice adoption rights have tended for some time to only be granted to married couples where the wife is under 35 and the husband is under 40. The long-standing and – in the eyes of some – arcane bar on adoption by gay and unmarried couples is in the process of being removed, following the passage of the controversial Adoption and Children Bill in November 2002.

            The adoption process normally takes the following path:

• A social worker will meet a couple seeking to adopt, together and individually, on several separate occasions
• The prospective adoptive parents’ personal backgrounds will be investigations and they will be quizzed on their reasons for wanting to adopt
• Once they are approved, the child will be put into their provisional care (social services authorities or their adoption panels must be notified of this if it is done through an approved adoption society)
• Adoption orders can only be made by a family proceedings court, sitting in private, three months after notification to the authority

Wardship

As distinct from fostering and adoption, wardship is the process by which a child is effectively taken under the wing of a court in the case of a serious dispute between his or her parents or guardians. Children are made wards of court to stop a parent taking them out of the country.

            In the 1980s, this procedure was often used by social services authorities in preference to care proceedings. However, today they are rarely involved directly in wardship cases.

Childminding

Since the passage of the Care Standards Act 2000, regulation of childminding has been in the hands of Ofsted. Prior to that, however, social services authorities were responsible for:

• Keeping a register of people who received payment for looking after children under the age of five
• Inspecting applicants’ homes when applications to be registered as childminders were made
• Registration, when granted, was subject to conditions covering the facilities to be provided; the number and qualifications of staff; and the maximum number of children who could be minded
• Registration was refused if the home or the nature of the application was not deemed suitable
• Inspection could take place at any time and if registration conditions were breached it could be revoked or modified to reduce the maximum number of children to be minded

Other Aspects of Early Years Learning and Care

To integrate all forms of child support relevant to early years development, particularly in relation to poorer families, the Government has launched an initiative called Sure Start. This brings together health visitors, play groups, early education and financial advice and support under one roof in local community centres.

Protection of Children Act 1999

Introduced following a series of high profile scandals about the abuse of children in residential care homes, this saw the introduction of a statutory list of all people considered to be unsuitable to work with children. A list along these lines – the consultancy service index - had been kept by the Secretary of State since 1993, but the 1999 Act formalised this by enforcing it as a statutory list, to which all existing names were added. It requires childcare organisations to inform the Government if they:

• Transfer or dismiss someone guilty of misconduct which has harmed a child or put a child at risk
• An individual evades disciplinary action along these lines by resigning or retiring

Community care for elderly and disabled people

Under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, social services authorities were charged with:

• Promoting domiciliary, day and respite services to allow people to live in their own homes
• Ensuring that those who provide services make practical support a high priority
• Carry out a proper assessment of a person’s needs followed by good case management
• Develop a flourishing independent/private sector alongside good public services
• Clarify their responsibilities, constantly improve their value for money and implement a new funding structure
• Prepare plans for community care arrangements, working with NHS authorities, publishing them and keeping them under review in consultation with bodies in the public and voluntary sectors. Collaboration between the NHS and local government to improve non-hospital based services was first introduced in the mid-1970s, when joint consultative committees (JCCs) were introduced, consisting of representatives from all relevant statutory agencies (most of these were wound up following the Health Act 1999)

How community care works for elderly and disabled people

Social services authorities have a duty to assess the needs of people who require care due to their age, infirmity, disability or other circumstances. These procedures must take into account the following:

• If an assessment shows that someone is disabled, the authority must determine the services required and inform them of this and their right to appeal. Though some authorities have been accused in the past of offering limited services because of their budgetary concerns, courts now take into account these financial restrictions
• Services can be provided to cover the following range of needs: home help, hot meals, telephone, cheap travel, parking, holidays, home modifications and aids to daily living. In addition, employment can be provided for disabled people in sheltered workshops, while day nurseries and centres are available for children and the disabled

The moves towards a greater emphasis on community care over the past decade have seen many more people than ever before looked after in their homes or in those of family members by carers – themselves normally close relatives or friends. Under the terms of the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1996 individuals who provide, or intend to provide, a substantial amount of regular unpaid care to a person being assessed for community care can request an assessment of their own needs – which might lead to, for example, respite care for the carer (time off). In addition, the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996 introduced a system whereby cash was given to dependent individuals – renamed clients – to enable them to “buy” their own care services for themselves.

More recently, in 1999, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Home Office Minister Paul Boateng unveiled a package of measures designed to help carers. Dubbed the country’s first ever National Carers’ Strategy, this saw the following benefits introduced:

·       A carer’s pension, intended to give those of pensionable age an extra £50 a week by the year 2050

·       Council tax rebates for carers

·       £140m to help carers take a break over the next three years

·       Better co-ordination of local council and health authorities

·       New legal powers to enable local authorities to provide services to carers directly

·       A charter of rights setting out what carers can expect from long-term services

·       A new census question to increase information about carers 

·       Plans to extend the New Deal to help carers return to work

·       More “carer friendly” employment with the Government taking the lead

·       Support for young carers, including help at school;

·       Special help for disabled children, with technology to help carers with housing and with transport;

·       Support for neighbourhood services, including care centres

Private sector residential care

Since the late 1980s and early Nineties, there has been an increasing emphasis on residential care being provided by the private sector, rather than the social services authorities themselves – consistent with the Tory government’s determination to make local councils enabling, rather than providing, authorities.

            Broadly speaking, the process followed when an elderly person reaches the point of requiring residential accommodation is as follows:

• They are assessed by a social worker and placed in a home that best suits their needs (whether local authority or private)
• Where a private home is chosen, the ability of the person concerned to pay the full economic cost of their care is assessed

Under the terms of the Tories’ “mixed economy of care”, residents in private homes could claim a social security residential care allowance, which they had to pay over to the owner, and a personal allowance which they were permitted to keep for themselves.  However, those in local authority homes were not entitled to claim the residential care allowance – a fact that can meant the final “bill” presented for the care of individuals admitted to them appeared, on the surface, to be far higher. This was used by the Government as leverage to argue that councils were being “excessive” with their charges.

To aid local authorities slightly in expanding the amount of community care they provided, the Government gave them a special transitional grant (STG), which they invariably argued was too little. In addition, Ministers insisted, controversially, that 85 per cent of the money provided must be used to arrange private sector residential placements.

Other sources of tension emerged at the same time between authorities and the Government over residential social care. The NHS was pushing for as many people as possible to be moved out of its hospitals and into other forms of care to avoid so-called “bed blockage” – the use of beds that could otherwise be freed up for acute patients. In addition, Ministers gave authorities responsibility at this time for registering private care homes, in so doing supervising standards of care that did not, as a matter of course, apply to their own homes.

To ensure reasonable standards of care are being adhered to by the private, public and voluntary sectors, in 2004 the Government set up a new regulator, the Commission for Social Care Inspection. This is the Ofsted of the social services sector. It inspects and imposes national standards on all organisations in the care sector – including day care centres, care homes for the elderly and mentally ill, children’s homes, residential special schools and even boarding schools. As of April 2009, the commission was due to have its powers combined with those of the Healthcare Commission (which handles complaints about inadequate care standards in the NHS), under a new all-encompassing Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Treatment of the Mentally Ill

Local authorities have the following, limited, powers in relation to the treatment of people with severe mental health problems:

• Approved social workers (ASWs) have right to apply for person to be admitted to hospital for up 72 hours for compulsory observation (must be supported by two doctors – except in emergencies, when one may be sufficient)
• Observation order can then be granted for up to 28 days if a hospital psychiatrist sees fit
• If an approved social worker believes a mentally disordered person is being ill-treated or neglected on private property an application can be made to a magistrate for a warrant to search the premises
• ASWs can also make applications for mentally ill people to be admitted to hospital for treatment – provided they have consent of the nearest relative. However, if the ASW believes consent is being withheld “unreasonably”, they can apply to the courts for an order appointing someone else to have the rights of “nearest relative”
• Social services authorities can be appointed as guardians to mentally ill people who are unlikely to respond to hospital treatment, but are in need of protection. Private individuals can be appointed too – but only with the consent of the authority

© James Morrison 2007