Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 1
1
Acknowledged
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...
Conclusion
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Education (the Department), including its Chief Social Worker for Children and Families, about the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme (the Innovation Programme). The Department has overall policy responsibility for children’s social care and is accountable to Parliament for ensuring that the social care services local authorities provide is of adequate quality to protect and support children.1 In 2019–20 local authorities spent some £9.2 billion on children’s social care.2
Government Response Summary
The government agreed and will promote a culture of evaluation through evaluation of new proposals and funding for a children's services What Works Centre, including initiatives looking at areas such as Family Help services, and children looked after placements.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. promote and nurture a culture of evaluation. It will do so through two main mechanisms: firstly, a commitment to evaluate new proposals in the Care Review implementation strategy; and secondly, funding and support for a children’s services What Works Centre. The department published Children's social care: Stable Homes, Built on Love on 2 February 2023 which is an implementation strategy responding to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. It includes new initiatives looking at areas such as Family Help services, and children looked after placements. The department will assess the development and delivery of these proposals through a programme of rigorous evaluation where appropriate. Departmental analysts are working with their policy counterparts, the Evaluation Task Force, HM Treasury and local authority (LA) practice leaders to ensure evaluation and the associated insight and learning is at the heart of the reforms. The Early Intervention Foundation and What Works for Children's Social Care recently merged. The new merged organisation is operating initially under the working name of What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care (WWEICSC). The department is continuing to fund the newly merged WWEICSC. The new centre will use its expertise and knowledge to promote both the generation and use of evidence to deliver more effective universal, targeted and specialist services for families. To date: • WWEICSC maintains an evidence store with at-a-glance ratings for overall programme effectiveness: it receives more than 3,000 unique downloads a month; and • WWEICSC has had 80% of local authorities involved in evaluations to date and its interventions have reached over 1,100 schools. Work is also ongoing to nurture and support the culture of evaluation within the department following the publication of the department’s evaluation strategy in June 2022. billion. This has increased by 32% (£2.9 billion) since 2015. 4.3 The department has worked in close collaboration with DLUHC and HMT on the publication of Children's social care: Stable Homes, Built on Love which seeks to put children’s services on a long-term sustainable footing by pivoting majority service use to early family help and support and, where appropriate, increased (and more easily accessible) use of fostering and kinship arrangements. The government is therefore satisfied that the publication of its implementation strategy addresses this recommendation. 4.4 The government wants local authorities to use funding flexibly where there are financial barriers to implementing family-led alternatives to care, through family network support packages. The department will test how to optimise implementation of Family Network Support Packages in local areas, alongside reforms to Family Help and child protection, through an end-to-end Families First for Children Pathfinder. 4.5 Further, the department will be delivering an initial fostering recruitment and retention programme in the North-East Regional Improvement and Innovation Alliance. This will introduce a regional support hub and targeted communications and will aim to improve retention using the evidence-based model Mockingbird. The aim is to