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ITEM EX6

EXECUTIVE – 3 APRIL 2002

REVIEW OF EDUCATION, SOCIAL SERVICES AND CULTURAL SERVICES

Report of the Review Team

1. A review of the relationships between Education, Social Services and Cultural Services and of their structures was commissioned by the Executive in November 2001.
2. A review team was set up consisting of Stephen Capaldi (Director for Strategy), Roy Smith (Acting Chief Education Officer), Mary Robertson (Director of Social Services), Richard Munro (Director of Cultural Services), Hilary Simpson (Adviser to the Chief Executive), Janet Godden (Executive Member for Children & Young People), Neil Fawcett (Executive Member for Learning & Culture), Keith Moultrie (Social Services Research and Development Unit) and Gill Lucas (Head of Public Sector Practice, KPMG). Phil Hodgson (Assistant Director, Children and Families in Social Services) also attended a number of meetings and Diane Surman acted as secretary to the group.
3. The terms of reference of the review were as follows:

1. to review the structures of the Education Service, Social Services and Cultural Services, and to prepare options and recommendations for consideration by the Executive;
2. to examine the potential for exploiting synergies between functions currently managed separately in the three departments, and thereby to improve efficiency and to help our services meet the needs of their customers more effectively;
3. to take account of "Raising Our Performance" and the findings of the IdeA Peer Review, in particular the need for:

1. our services to be more focused on the customer;
2. a more "one Council" approach;
3. the development of a more strategic and corporate role for directors;
4. a reduction in the number of CCMT directors;
5. officers to work effectively with the thematic structures and ways of working adopted by the new Executive and Scrutiny Committees;
6. effective working with partner organisations;
4. to take account of structures developed in other authorities, and of any evidence about how successful these have been and levels of public satisfaction;
5. to take account of the views of County Councillors;
6. to take account of the views of representative groups of managers in the three departments and other key interest groups and users;
7. to prepare a report for submission to the Executive in Spring 2002.
   
   

The National Context

4. There is considerable pressure at national level to provide more closely integrated services for children, reinforced by recognition of the rights of the child, and based on consultation with children and families about their needs and about the response of public services in meeting them. There is general agreement that what this means in practice is:

1. fewer points of contact with "officialdom";
2. better communication with service users;
3. responsive services which are provided and managed seamlessly.
5. Across education, social services, health and other agencies, good practice guidance in recent years has repeatedly emphasised the case for pooled budgets, reduced duplication, and coherent planning. Central government has encouraged or enforced this approach in a variety of ways. A number of recent national initiatives already require joint planning and working, including:

1. Early Years and Childcare Development Partnerships;
2. Children’s Services Plans;
3. Behaviour Support Plans;
4. Sure Start;
5. Education Action Zones;
6. the Connexions Service;
7. Youth Offending Teams;
8. Quality Protects.
   
   
6. In 2000 new government structures were set up to co-ordinate services for children and young people across departments, including a Cabinet committee chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a new Minister for Young People, and a Children and Young People’s Unit whose role is to develop an overarching strategy for all children up to 19. The period of the review coincided with the consultation period on the government’s document "Building a Strategy for Children and Young People".

Process

7. The review drew on three principal sources of evidence:

1. comparative data from other authorities;
2. written consultation responses;
3. face-to-face consultation.
8. The core review team (consisting of the Council officers) has met fortnightly during most of the review period and the wider team (including the elected members and external advisers) has met occasionally.

Comparative Data: Education and Social Services

9. The review team were mindful that a number of authorities have recently undertaken high-profile restructuring exercises resulting in the creation of separate directorates for Children’s Services. The creation of Hertfordshire’s "Children, Schools and Families" service (launched in April 2001) has attracted particular interest. A similar initiative in Surrey (known as "Surrey Children’s Service") is due to become operational in September 2002. A number of unitary authorities in the local area, including West Berkshire and Milton Keynes, have also adopted "Children’s Services" structures.
10. The structures of thirteen other County Councils (Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, East Sussex, North Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Somerset, Essex, Lancashire, Dorset and Staffordshire) were looked at in some detail. Of these, the majority still describe themselves as having a traditional structure, with separate Education and Social Services directorates.
11. Although the Hertfordshire structure has been in place formally for less than a year, a preliminary evaluation has been carried out by the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The evaluation report concluded that "Children, Schools and Families addresses long-standing problems to do with the co-ordination of services across traditional local authority boundaries and does so in a way which is clearly in line with national policy development and priorities. Other local authorities … would be well-advised to track its progress with interest."
12. At local level the Hertfordshire service is delivered by multi-professional teams working from a common location. All new referrals go to a single call centre where a Client Services Team provides a rapid initial response. The new service has common forms and protocols for referrals and assessments. A single co-ordinator is designated to take the lead in each individual case and liaises with colleagues from other professions. Service users therefore have a single consistent point of contact instead of having to negotiate a variety of different professional services within the authority.
13. It should be noted that the Hertfordshire project was developed from first principles as a radical re-thinking of service delivery rather than as a reorganisation of existing departmental structures and responsibilities, and was only implemented after a two-year period of consultation, development and planning. It should also be noted that it is based on a preventative strategy with a particular focus on children in need.
14. Surrey’s aims are similar and include a single referral point for Children’s Services; a key worker for each child; a system where information about a child only has to be provided to the authority once; the elimination of "parallel interventions"; and empowering staff to solve problems at local level. Another of Surrey’s aims is "demystification", which they describe as "clear information and processes for users, and clear roles and responsibilities for staff".
15. Other authorities are working towards similar aims without having undertaken such radical restructuring. For example, Wiltshire have recently created local area-based education teams which will offer an integrated service alongside Children and Families staff from Social Services, with staff based at the same locations.

Comparative Data: Education and Cultural Services

16. The majority of counties surveyed no longer have a separate department corresponding to Oxfordshire’s Cultural Services. In a number of cases libraries and related services are incorporated into a Lifelong Learning division within Education, in other authorities they form part of a Community Services (or similar) directorate with a wide range of responsibilities.
17. There is no hard evidence that this has resulted in improved services to the public, but a number of authorities commented that they had achieved economies of scale in support services such as personnel, finance, ICT and so on. Some authorities commented that the assimilation of libraries and related services within a larger directorate had protected them from the worst effects of resource constraints.

Consultation: Written

18. A letter inviting views on what hinders or promotes effective cross-service working within the current structure was sent out in December 2001 to (a) all managers in the three departments; (b) all elected members; (c) all headteachers and Chairs of Governors; and (d) a wide range of voluntary and community groups and partner organisations drawn from the Council’s stakeholder database.
19. 33 written responses were received, the majority from Education and voluntary sector representatives, as follows:

Education employees, including headteachers 12

Voluntary organisations 11

Chairs of Governors 4

Social Services employees 2

Health 2

Cultural Services employees 1

County Councillors 1

A summary of the main points made in the written responses has been placed in the Members’ Resource Centre.

20. Poor communication between different branches or divisions within existing departments is mentioned as frequently in the written responses as problems between departments. For example, both Health and Carers’ Organisations stressed the need for better liaison between different teams within Social Services – eg assessment teams and disability teams – and between different area offices, who according to the health visitors who responded, often seem to be unaware of each other’s activities. The Manager of one Carers’ Centre commented that "there is almost no meaningful communication between the different sections [of Social Services] such as mental health, older people and children and families."
21. Both Health and Carers’ Organisations also comment that it is difficult to know who to contact within the authority. Health visitors refer to a failure on the part of Education to keep partner organisations informed of staffing changes, with the result that health professionals continue to refer cases to individuals or even structures which are no longer in place. Another Carers’ Centre manager commented on the difficulty of keeping up with internal changes in Social Services, saying: "I have never been provided with a structural map of the service or the decision-making process."

Consultation: Face-to-Face

22. A number of face-to-face consultation meetings were held during February and March 2002 with the following groups:

1. headteachers and governors;
2. employees working in the Education Action Zone;
3. members of the Parent Advisory Group;
4. Chairs of Divisional Youth Committees;
5. employees working in Early Years;
6. Social Services managers;
7. members of the Area Child Protection Committee;
8. members of the Children’s Task Force;
9. three mixed groups of employees from all three departments.
23. These meetings confirmed that the County Council is not currently perceived as providing a seamless or coherent service across the three departments in question. For example, both professionals and parents commented on the difficulties encountered in accessing services for children with Special Educational Needs and disabilities, where the structure is currently fragmented both within Education and Social Services as well as between the two departments. Parents told of having to provide the same information about their child many times over to different professionals so that they felt that they were "always being assessed".
24. A number of the staff consultation groups commented on the general lack of strategic planning across services. Services which share common users are frequently operating with different definitions, planning processes, databases and systems. For example, one participant commented on how definitions of "youth" or "young people" varied between different services.
25. Opportunities for greater synergy are also being lost at the front line. A librarian commented that local schools failed to pass on information about the curriculum, with the result that libraries lost the opportunity to provide support: "the first we know about it is when fifty children come in asking for the same book".

Examples of Existing Good Practice

26. There are a number of pockets of good "seamless" delivery within the authority, but these are rarely disseminated and adopted as standard practice. Consultation with employees from the Education Action Zone and from Early Years was specifically designed to pull out the lessons learnt from their recent experience of more "joined-up" working. Both groups of employees stressed the benefits of cross-service secondment and joint training, and the need for continual attention to be given to communication.

Other Developments within the County Council

27. Since the Review was initiated, Directors have agreed a new generic job description. This emphasises their role as corporate leaders with responsibility for a portfolio of services, rather than specialist heads of a specific professional function.
28. Following on from this, a working group has been set up to develop an implementation plan for a "Head of Service" structure at second tier with the intention of establishing a set of clear, transparent and accountable groupings of services which make sense to service users, partners and colleagues.
29. Both Social Services and Education are already committed to reviewing their senior management teams to provide more coherent structures which will address current priorities effectively.
30. Since January there has been an Acting Chief Education Officer in post. It has recently been announced that the current Director of Social Services will retire at the end of April and an Interim Director is likely to be appointed pending the outcome of this Review.
31. The authority’s e-government strategy includes the development of a contact centre which will address some of the communication issues raised in the consultation. The new Management Information System and the Oxfordshire Community Network (Broadband) will also facilitate better communication and information-sharing. However effective communication at the initial point of contact with the authority will need to be backed up by continuing high levels of seamless customer service for individuals once they are "in the system".
32. Social Services continues to face acute budgetary problems and is currently working on the implementation of the FINE ("Finance in a New Environment") report, which involves significant changes to systems, ways of working and organisational culture.
33. A Best Value Review of the Library Service is due to be presented to Best Value Committee on 27 March.

Conclusions: Education and Social Services

34. The findings of the Review confirm the need for these key services to work more closely together in the interests of their users, and for communication with users and partners generally to be improved. There is a strong case to be made for creating more responsive services which operate within a transparent and user-friendly structure based on user need rather than on traditional professional demarcations and supported by joint planning, data and information systems.
35. Structural change can act as a catalyst in changing ways of working and as a symbol of new types of behaviours and relationships, although it will not of itself achieve such changes. The Review Team believe that the case for radical change to directorate structures in the short term is not an overwhelming one. Such changes need careful planning and there is a danger that a substantial re-casting of the current directorate structure would divert energy from more urgent priorities, such as the need to align spending with resources within Social Services and the need to raise standards of achievement in Education. While the new structures in Hertfordshire and Surrey will no doubt be watched with interest, it is too early at this stage to assess whether they are likely to make a real and lasting impact on customer service and user satisfaction.

Conclusions: Education and Cultural Services

36. Oxfordshire lacks a clear vision for an integrated service which encompasses (a) schools, (b) libraries and other cultural services and (c) adult and community learning as joint facilitators of lifelong learning, although some steps have been taken with, for example, youth arts development, the Cultural Entitlement initiative, and the recent joint appointment between Cultural Services and Adult and Community Learning of a Local Learning Centres Development Officer. The Review Team recommends that further work is undertaken to explore the potential synergies between these services and to identify economies of scale that might result from a more holistic approach.

RECOMMENDATIONS

37. The Review Team RECOMMENDS that:

1. in view of (i) the lack of conclusive evidence at this stage of the benefits of separate directorates for children’s services and adult services and (ii) the scale of change already under way in Social Services, the Social Services Directorate should retain its current boundaries for the present;
2. the internal structure of Social Services should be reviewed and the Interim Director should put forward proposals designed to:

1. improve co-ordination, both within Social Services and between Social Services and other services;
2. improve effective communication and ease of contact for service users and partners;
3. deliver more integrated services and effective joint working with other County Council services and with partners, based on joint planning and information sharing;

3. the Acting Chief Education Officer should bring forward proposals for reorganising the structure of his directorate with the same aims, and with a view to bringing together under a single Head of Service those functions which support children in need and which require close working links with Social Services;
4. the Acting Chief Education Officer and the Interim Director of Social Services should report to the Chief Executive on how they propose to improve efficiency and customer service through more effective joint working;
5. the potential for improved efficiency and effectiveness arising from bringing together (i) Libraries and other cultural services and (ii) Adult and Community Learning under a single management structure should be noted, and further work should be carried out to quantify these;
6. this further work should include exploration of the merits of combining Libraries and Adult and Community Learning either (i) within the Education Directorate or (ii) within a new directorate of Community Services;
7. further work should also be carried out to identify an imaginative new vision and direction for the Library Service and the Adult and Community Learning Service in the 21st century, building on the Best Value Action Plan for the Library Service, and recommendations should be formulated by December 2002.

STEPHEN CAPALDI
Director for Strategy, on behalf of the Review Team

Background Papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Stephen Capaldi, Tel: Oxford 815466

18 March 2002

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