Government responds to the Munro Review of Child Protection

The Government has published its response to Professor Eileen Munro’s recommendations to reform the child protection system, set out earlier this year.

The response outlines the Government’s intention, working with professionals, to build a system focused on the needs, views and experiences of vulnerable children. The Government will reduce central regulation and prescription and place greater trust and responsibility in skilled professionals and local leaders to bring about long-term reform.

The Government’s ambition is for a child protection system that truly values and acts on the feedback of children, young people and their families.

Ministers agree with Professor Munro that the current system is overly focused on complying with procedures and targets as a measure of success. The new approach is based on developing professional expertise and providing a range of help and services to children and families that meet all their needs.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said:

Today’s response is the first stage of a journey which will fundamentally change the child protection system – we’re not just tinkering at the edges and fixing short term problems. We are freeing hardworking social workers and other professionals from structures, procedures and rulebooks so they can do their best for vulnerable children and their families.

This is a new mindset and a new relationship between central Government and local services. I am determined that we build on the excellent work of Professor Munro and I trust the workforce to deliver the reforms without working to prescription.

We have worked openly and collaboratively with professionals and children’s leaders to create reforms that are sustainable in the long term. The Government is not in the business of telling local services how to implement the reforms - as has happened in the past - because this has been shown by Professor Munro to result in unintended consequences.

The changes will take time to fully implement. We have outlined some key milestones so that we keep up momentum and ensure that the process is advanced by next year. I am confident that working together we will give more of our children a safe and happy childhood.

Professor Munro will continue to advise the Government and will undertake an interim assessment of progress next year.

Professor Eileen Munro, Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics said:

This is the start of a reform process to move the focus of help and protection firmly onto children and young people and away from compliance with excessive bureaucratic demands. It is time to give professionals more freedom and responsibility for improving their skills in helping children and young people. The presence and influence of professionals working with the Government is crucial in delivering the reforms in the longer term.

An Implementation Working Group, drawing on expertise from local authority children’s services, social workers, education, police and the health service, advised the Government on its response to Professor Munro’s report.

The response includes the following actions by the Government:

• A radical reduction in the amount of central regulation and locally designed rules and procedures.
• Slimmed down statutory guidance in the interim by December 2011 including removing timescales for assessments and removing the distinction between initial and core assessment.
• A Chief Social Worker to provide a permanent professional presence for social work in Government, to cover children and adults, in place by the end of 2012.
• The Department for Education to establish a joint programme of work with the Department of Health by September 2011 to make sure children’s safeguarding is a central consideration of the health reforms.
• Undertake further work with the sector to consider the evidence and opportunities for using systems review methodology for Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) to help all local services properly learn the lessons from SCRs.

 Actions for local services to implement include:

• Local authorities to appoint a practising senior social worker as a Principal Child and Family Social Worker.
• Local services to increase the range and number of preventative services and to provide families with an ‘early help offer’.
• Local authorities to assess and redesign child and family social services, based on feedback from children and families

 The Government is clear that with greater freedoms come greater accountability. Therefore there are several actions in the plan to improve inspection.

These include:

• All local services – health, education, police, probation and the justice system – to be inspected on how well they protect children.
• The experiences of children and families to be at the heart of Ofsted’s inspection system, looking at how effective the help has been rather than whether certain processes have been met.