Advantages and Challenges of Devolving Budget Responsibilities to Front-line Staff

As with decision making in general, staff felt it was more efficient to devolve budget

responsibilities to staff: decisions could be made more quickly and followed through, in ways that could make a big difference to the lives to children and young people. Practitioners felt they could make more informed decisions about how best to use limited resources if they were able to use their discretion to channel funds to the most needy:

„It's often the small things that make a big difference to young people's lives…with a young person…I've got a whole list of things that all the other Social Workers didn't do [over] the last four years. He needed a plaque put down in the cemetery in memory of his mum and it was only £80, because it helps move a young person on quickly.‟

(SWP Staff Member) Devolving responsibility meant staff had an understanding of the limitations and flexibility

available from under or overspending, and more clarity over spending on individual young people. Some staff felt they could develop more honest relationships with young people by accepting responsibility for financial restraints and by sharing information about these with young people, which in turn taught young people how to manage their finances.

The additional responsibility of holding budgets brought pressure that was sometimes unwelcome, and alleviating that pressure was one deciding factor in management in SWP C taking back budgetary responsibility from staff when funding became stretched:

„the budgets are very tight and I'm not sure of the value of that [holding budgets] for staff, I think they find that a bit of an added pressure at this moment in time…‟

(SWP Staff Member) There was lack of clarity noted in some sites concerning the parameters around finances:

„I think [staff involvement in finance] is deliberately a grey area…It's not clear to me …certainly for children [living] with families, what is available, what can we claim and how much is in the pot…There's a certain

expenditure I can take from petty cash, it's not clear exactly … I think a lot of it's about how bolshie you are with the admin staff and say well I want that money now.‟

(SWP Staff Member)

2.4.1 Multi-disciplinary Teams

SWPs had instituted (or carried over) multi-disciplinary practice in different ways. In common with most Children‟s Services and leaving care teams, all the pilots employed a variety of differently qualified staff, including child and family support workers, caseworkers working with non-eligible care leavers, and project workers with a developmental role, Connexions workers, and youth workers, as well as qualified social workers, and one SWP employed mental health workers. As noted in Chapter 1, some SWPs had to abandon plans to employ specialist staff, or lost specialist staff during the life of the pilot, because of resource issues, or because of cuts

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within a partner service, for example Connexions. Staff in SWP B felt that a multi-disciplinary approach was hampered where large numbers of children and young people were out-of- borough.

Staff described how operating in a multi-disciplinary team brought experts in different fields together to provide a more holistic service for young people. Young people and families could develop a rapport with more than one individual, which offered continuity and choice:

„If you‟re a multi-professional team then you get a better, well-rounded service for young people…[with] continuity of service so they develop a rapport with the team as much as they do with an individual, and sometimes they connect, develop a good relationship with [a support] worker, so they have a range of people that they can select if you like, rather than just one.‟

(SWP Staff Member) A more fluid and collaborative approach could alleviate stress amongst social workers and lead to all staff feeling of equal value.

2.4.2 Small Teams

The SWP Working Group (Le Grand 2007) recommended that an SWP should consist of about 6-10 social work staff or other professional staff, plus administrative and other support. Four of the five SWPs consisted of teams of 10 to 14 professional staff (see Table 2.1). The other SWP consisted of four such teams; these were described as largely separate from each other which meant that there was not always a consistent ethos across teams. However, subsequent to becoming an SWP, the whole staff group in the large SWP had met slightly more frequently, and staff representatives from teams participated in joint working groups.

Staff held the view that a small team encouraged communication and fostered an intimate culture, as anticipated by proponents of the SWP model. Staff described how they knew each member of the team personally, became familiar with each other‟s cases, and were mutually supportive:

„Working in a small team… in a small office and we do work very closely together…we do get to know each other's cases…after a visit…we'll have a little discussion, offloading somewhat…we're very, very supportive of each other, we will offer advice and support… sharing caseloads, going out on joint visits if a colleague is weary or not confident…we're all very excited about being in this pilot and…in the smaller group you can feel the energy and enthusiasm.‟

(SWP Staff Member) In Chapters 4 and 5, we report children‟s and parents‟ views on the advantages of a small team where all staff were familiar with children and families. Staff felt it was easier to provide a more personal service in smaller practices (the merits of offering a personalised service are explored in the next section). Staff in SWP B felt it was advantageous for the practice to be small enough for the project lead to be able to manage all the social workers and to be familiar with all the cases. In contrast, staff from SWP F described how their aim of sharing personal knowledge of colleagues‟ cases was aided by group supervision.

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However, staff noted that in a smaller team there were fewer people to call on, for example in a crisis, or to share their knowledge. This was especially true where there were few experienced staff on a team (SWP D). The impact of staff shortages or a large proportion of staff time being taken up by travel (working on out-of-area cases) was felt to be greater on a small team. Small teams felt financially vulnerable, for example to cash flow problems (SWP B), and it was felt that small size could be a barrier to building trust with outside agencies.

2.4.3 A Personalised, Flexible Service

Staff from some SWPs described numerous ways in which they felt they were offering a more personal and flexible service, for example by offering activities or contact at weekends, or providing an in-house, out-of-hours service. This flexibility was beneficial in building productive relationships, including with parents with whom relations had previously been poor:

„Two parents…we're going to [arrange] six times a year contact…and the Social Worker's said that he is prepared to give a commitment to do that on a Saturday

morning…because he feels that this is going to be better quality…building up better links and so we're really looking at opening the building on a Saturday…and I think this kind of creativity is really great….‟

(SWP Staff Member) Being based in accessible welcoming premises was considered key by those SWPs that could offer this. An open-door policy provided opportunities for staff to spend more quality time with young people as well as a place where creative activities could be developed:

„Relationships … have improved… with carers and some of the young people I think by the fact that we offer a more open-door policy at the SWP and that they are comfortable with that, and they do feel happy just to drop in, as and when, they don‟t need a reason.‟

(SWP Staff Member) There was a sense that, in some instances, premises were chosen primarily on the basis of cost-effectiveness rather than meeting the needs of young people. Staff at the in-house practice were concerned that their offices were located away from the town centre which raised

challenges for young people visiting their offices. A bus pass was introduced to enable young people to visit the premises independently. Two pilots (SWPs B and C), whose cohort of young people was geographically spread, had not focused on establishing a welcoming base and did not operate a drop-in or open-door policy, although a move by one of these SWPs (SWP C) to two new „more cost-effective‟ locations provided adequate space for a number of activities including using a computer, interviews with Connexions workers, and running groups, for the minority of young people who travelled to these sites. Children‟s and parents‟ views of the SWP offices are reported in Chapters 4 and 5.

One aspect of the original SWP ethos was to provide an in-house, out-of-hours service so that at all times children, carers and families could reach someone familiar or someone who knew their circumstances. The staff team from one site (SWP F) was running a comprehensive out-of- hours service, where an SWP staff member was available on the phone throughout all hours that the SWP office was closed. Staff judged the service to be a well-used and personal one:

„Young people are more comfortable with that because they know if they do ring the number out of hours the likelihood [is] of them speaking somebody who they know and who knows them…From our point of view and feedback

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from residential workers, foster carers, it works really really well because it's consistent…because they [the staff] all know the cases inside and out.‟

(SWP Staff Member) Two sites (SWP D and SWP C) piloted a partial in-house out-of-hours service. SWP C staff operated their service from the local authority Emergency Duty Team (EDT) office from 5pm until midnight, at which point the EDT took over. SWP D discontinued their out-of-hours service after eight weeks as there was little uptake, there were also concerns about the demands this service represented for SWP staff. SWP C however extended the pilot service and planned to make a decision about the future of the service after March 2012, based on usage data. The fourth site (SWP B) wanted to operate an out-of-hours service but the local authority did not include this in the contract. The in-house site used the local authority EDT. Staff from SWPs that did not provide a comprehensive out-of-hours service made themselves available outside office hours on a goodwill basis by responding at their discretion when young people contacted them by texts, emails or calls to mobile phones. They referred cases they defined as more severe to the local authority‟s EDT.

2.4.4 Advantages and Disadvantages of Offering a Personal, Flexible and

Accessible Service

Staff who were providing duty or out-of hours services considered that offering these services in-house by a team that was familiar with most of an SWP‟s caseload could provide children, carers and families with flexible access to a personal service. Young people would feel more secure and carers more valued if they felt they could reach a known person outside office hours. This flexibility promoted a perception of the service as popular and well used.

It was noted in Chapter 1 that the requirement to work unsocial hours could deter applications for jobs in SWPs. With no additional resources, a flexible service (e.g. long opening hours) could overload the staff team and deplete the core service. If underused, out-of-hours in-house provision in a small team was considered a poor use of resources. Some perceived an out-of- hours service as creating over-dependency amongst young people or carers. One site (SWP C) was not able to offer a personalised out of-hours service: the geographical size of the practice, and its operation as four separate teams meant that staff delivering the county-wide service were unfamiliar with the circumstances and issues surrounding young people and carers outside their local team.

2.4.5 Reducing Bureaucracy and Paperwork

This has emerged as a key theme for the reform of social work more widely (Social Work Task Force 2009; Munro 2011) and the original Le Grand report noted that high levels of bureaucracy and paperwork restricted the amount of time social workers spent with children. Other pilots, such as those established by CWDC‟s Remodelling Social Work Project (Baginsky et al. 2011), have identified administrative support as crucial in freeing up practitioner time for direct work with children and families. The figures provided on administrative support at the beginning of this chapter show that the levels of support were in line with the 1:5 ratio of administrative staff to practitioners recommended by Le Grand (2007), although staff sickness and absences could easily undermine this capacity in a small organisation. Perceptions of the adequacy of

administrative support varied between SWPs: two sites (SWPs D and F) felt that their

administrative support compared favourably with that provided in a local authority, and made it a priority to increase provision during the pilot via cost savings elsewhere:

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„Yes, we had a surplus on our first year on the placement …we kept a percentage of that and as a team we sat down and said okay, how are we going to spend this money? And …everybody wanted additional admin support, so for this financial year we've bought in an admin worker for the team and, and she is now typing a lot of my contacts, … it saves me a lot of time…‟

(SWP Staff Member) Staff from three sites were less happy with their administrative support and suffered cuts in this area, which they felt they could ill afford. One of these sites (SWP B) suffered long periods when its administrative support was below quota or non-existent. Staff in another site (SWP C) perceived that administrative staff capacity had been unchanged with the advent of the SWP and that practitioners‟ administrative workload was increasing, if anything. Administrative staff in the in-house team were managed externally by the local authority‟s Director of Administration so staff saw them as offering a less tailored service.

Most staff reported that the amount of record keeping in relation to cases was no different from that in mainstream local authority teams, although some staff found it less onerous because they had a smaller caseload than they had experienced within mainstream services. One site (SWP F) had introduced a dictaphone system whereby administrators could type up

practitioners‟ spoken case notes, which the team found cost-effective as it freed up more highly paid practitioner time for face-to-face work with clients.

Practitioners in a number of sites described record keeping as burdensome, especially where they had insufficient administrative help to assist with typing up case notes or the local authority had handed over incomplete cases. Many staff worked overtime at home to keep paperwork up- to-date (as do many other social workers, Baginsky et al. 2010). Some of the additional

responsibilities introduced in some of the SWPs, such as strategic working groups or out-of- hours cover, also reduced the time available to work with young people.

In common with recent research (Broadhurst et al. 2009) and reviews (Social Work Task Force 2009), the Integrated Children‟s System (ICS) was identified as a source of problems across all SWPs. The system was described as slow; not user friendly; incompatible with social work recording systems; „overwhelming‟ in consequence of the number of panels that required

completion and as producing documents that were not friendly or accessible for young people to read. Staff reported occasions when documents recorded by other social workers and agencies could not be accessed, leaving SWP social workers feeling frustrated and unable to do their job properly:

„The previous LAC document for a review would probably take half an hour, now we have to complete a new document and it took me three or four hours in a day...it‟s quadrupled my time on a document that previously I was very confident on, this new document is very long winded and doesn‟t make any sense whatsoever‟

(SWP Staff Member) „The Pathway plans aren‟t as good as they used to be... they‟re not as

friendly for young people or as readable for young people‟

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Staff in two SWPs (B and D) had to keep written records while problems with ICS were sorted out, which led to a backlog, resolved only by considerably reducing time spent with children and families at a later date.