Why and How Is the Landscape of Childrens Services Changing in England - Case Study Example

WHY AND HOW THE LANDSCAPE OF CHILDREN’S SERVICES IN ENGLAND ARE CHANGING Introduction Change has been a constant feature of organisations and policies as procedures and expectations undergo corresponding enhancements. As government constantly creates new policies, resources likewise change direction. Rixon (2008) indicates that as changes take place in an organisation and society, practitioners with established roles are expected to adapt in these changes, while new ones have their roles created to suit the changes. England has witnessed a change in children’s services in the past years, alongside changes in various social services. Shifts in institutional values have also contributed to this change, such as the gendered character of contemporary parenting and the gendered character of childhood, which have corresponding implications in the children’s services (Daniel, e al., 2005). Today’s children’s services argue the importance of using gendered perspective in order to engage adequately with the causes and effects of child maltreatment. This perspective may be analysed as an outcome of the growing gendered character of the household and the workplace, which has characterised modern industrial societies like England. The Changing Landscape of Children’s Services England has designed and implemented its early years’ educational policy in the period of 1997-2004 and presented some innovations in the policy, its evidence base, and delivery of new services. It suggests evidence concerning expansion of services on the benefit of early years education on children’s development (Sylva and Pugh, 2005), a direction which children’s services as pedagogy is leading. Early year’s education in England is claimed to be transformed through integration of education and care at local and national level, the strong focus on families and children in the delivery of services, as well as the introduction of the Foundation Stag Curriculum 3-6 years and its birth-3 years supplement (Sylva and Pugh, 2005). Stone and Rixon (2008) stressed that while child-centred is the key, it is as important to seek the perspective of parents who are left with the child when all the professionals have gone home. Stone and Rixon also emphasised that it is important to recognise the value of families, which serve as one point for change and in which change itself can and should originate from, resonating with the changes in children’s services in England. The focus of change, as Rixon (2008) points out, has been on the challenges for practitioners of these currents, which likewise affect the experiences of children and their families. England launched in 2003 its implementation and impact evaluation findings for children’s trust pathfinders programs, promoting greater inter-agency cooperation between children’s services and professionals (O’Brien, et al., 2006). The results of this study indicate a strong endorsement for integrated children’s services strategy. Challenges with balancing targeted and universal service provision were reported while the scope of normal strategic partnership bodies with potentially overlapping goals was negotiated. The creation of children’s trust is merited to the protection and support for vulnerable children and in promoting collaboration and integration of preventive services for all children (O’Brien, et al., 2006). It is said that while there is overall support for the health, education, and care for the individual child, rather than the sectoral child, the total integration of services is challenged by differences between professional discourses and traditions. One of these discourses is keeping children safe within this type of universal trust, which is considered both structurally complex and emotionally difficult for the professionals (Rixon, 2008). It may be noted that until the last century in England, local and national policy was mostly based on the realms of education, childcare, and social care. These decisions were apparently categorized according to different levels such as conceptual, organizational, professional, and educational. However, there has been an administrative reorganisation of responsibility in the last decade in terms of children’s services, alongside a shift on how provisions for children and young people are envisaged. Social pedagogy has by far contributed to this shift, such as responsibility for childcare and social care, which is now moved from the Department of Health to what is now the Department for Children, Schools, and Families. It has a corresponding responsibility from early years education and childcare, out-of-school care, child protection, and schooling linked structurally with other departments (Warren, et al., 2006). This development shows an important shift in terms of how services are extended to children, thereby giving them more protection and care in the changing society of England. Rixon (2008) stressed that increasing participation is an important issue of both positioning people as consumers of services or even or child’s rights and of changing perspectives on children themselves. England’s status of the landscape of children’s services is changing based on the holistic change in children’s services, which UK is undergoing. Government policies such as Every Child Matters and Children’s Plan emphasize that services for children (childcare, child welfare, education, and health) must work more closely together alongside more interconnected occupations involved, with core training for workers across the sector for children and young people. This scenario suggests an implication for practitioners who work for children on the aspect of improving the childcare and children’s services through occupational capabilities brought about by the interconnectivity of occupations, training, and education meant to enhance the field. Rixon stressed the value of having just one practitioner to liase with, who helps in coordinating services on children’s behalf. Practitioners are seen to undertake more research and studies on children’s welfare in a pursuit to make the field more competent. This context of enhancing the protection of children is seen as their (children) being persons in their own right, rather than as problems to be managed and solved (Petrie, et al., 2008). Rights-based decision-making embodied in the provision of children’s services also examines conceptual barriers to incorporating children’s rights in the English law, understood in the context of the Human Rights Act 1998, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950 (Williams, 2008). Rights-based reasoning in the administrative practice is so important that traditions in law and policy on children and young people in England are identified, competing with effective implementation of children’s rights to protection and provision. Consultation with children and young people in care in England demonstrates how they can address issues that have direct connection with interagency service delivery (DfES, 2007 in Stone and Rixon, 2008). This perspective comes with the opportunity to search for fresh and new options, as well as identifying the best possibilities for realizing government’s intention. It is noteworthy to mention that new devolved government and agencies enable to create their own currents of change (Rixon, 2008), enabling England to push its own. As this change in the landscape of children’s service is seen as pedagogy, workers are then seen as pedagogues with their jobs (Sheppard, 2007). This is another implication of change for practitioners who work with children. They are not simply seen as child workers or childcare practitioners, but they are also envisaged as pedagogues who educate children, families, and children’s institutions on the trails of gendered services, protection, health, and child welfare. Moreover, there is a desire to find new approaches with the changes of the different types of children’s services (Petrie, et al., 2008). As continuous improvement is the desire of a pattern of continuous change in a modernising government, public bodies need to focus on results and monitor outcomes through set regulations, targets, audits, and inspection (Rixon, 2008). The term pedagogy is not often used in England except in the context of the classroom and formal education, but a consideration of pedagogic policy and practice in continental Europe is seen to help clarify the challenges and opportunities found in England’s context. The realms of policy development, training, and workforce issues are crossed by the potential benefits of taking a pedagogic approach in children’s services, acknowledged in recent government statements, exploring effectiveness of social pedagogy in children’s care in England. As practitioners become pedagogues, they now possess the character of being generalists who have broad training on theoretical, personal, and practical content that ideally fits them for outcome-focused work with children. This is one implication to practitioners of the change in children’s services. However, Stone and Rixon (2008) stressed the effects of reorganisation to practitioners who carry out the services, such as a loss of morale and expertise. On one hand, it was claimed that professionalism of the early year’s workforce has been the result of recent policy in England pertaining to Early Years Professional.” An increase in policy focus on those working with young children has transpired, raising questions on practitioners’ own responses to the debate about their education, training, qualifications, and work (McGillivray, 2008). There have been instances in the past that children with development problems were given multi-agency and multi-professional management, which do not produce significant outcomes for the child, but a detrimental one instead (Stone and Rixon, 2008). This has led towards a rethinking of new stances on the part of practitioners in England to refocus their handling of children’s services from multi-agency to interagency, suggesting a participation of different agencies with one holistic policy aiming to deal with the condition of the child (Ellis and Glasper, 2007). England has likewise acknowledged this necessity of linkage among child workers and practitioners in children’s services, whose active participation spells the difference between effective services and ineffective ones. On the other hand, while practitioners seem to support the principle of improving children’s services in England, the growing cynicism as a nature of change is implanted in reorganisation as well as a substantial impact upon morale. Hence, the process of reorganisation, as already pointed out, is considered a bruising one for every party involved in the children services change (Stone and Rixon, 2008). A study of a local government reorganisation involving England, among others, suggests a profound impact on the work undertaken by social services (Stone and Rixon, n.d.). Loss of expertise and morale was an impact of this reorganisation, indicating the fact that change does not always bring about good results. In England, the “Ask Us” project was established in order to enable disabled children and young people to transform children’s services. It was different from the proposal already worked out by adults, with a starting point that has views and feelings of groups of disabled children and young people between 4 and 24 years old (Burdett, et al., 2004). With the use of alternative means of communication employed on the “Two Way Street” project, the children and young people teach and advise adults on HW thy can best communicate with disabled children. Rixon (2008) likewise stressed this importance of communication in successful interagency working, which should be less on structural change and more on the skill of communication itself. It is likewise seen that if agency boundaries were dissolved and given that relevant professionals work within the same organisational structure, communication between them would improve (Rixon, 2008). In an audio transcript on Tony Howell, a Strategic Director for Children, Young People, and Families for Birmingham City Council, it was stressed that “Every Child Matters” in Birmingham has been the most significant driver for all of the agencies working with children to work together to a common cause. This program has allowed England to move away from the traditional model of delivering the same services. The new arrangement for services in Birmingham is now driven by the outcomes, which are most significant to the children of Birmingham. These are seen as making a better difference to children in this city. Interagency working which benefits children when several agencies do need to be involved with a child or their family has sometimes been a real challenge, both to families to help them navigate through these services but also to children about who is it that actually makes a difference. There used to be no agencies interlinking other agencies with one another in the pursuit of providing the needed children’s services; yet today, interagency working is essential where a child needs it. In some cases, it is the school that makes the difference, functioning as an agency, where the vast majority of children achieve the best outcomes (Howell: Interview, 2008). Likewise, Nelan Janagal, an Educational Psychologist, stressed that her field of specialisation has now trailed towards the path of many training activities, particularly parent training working with other professionals on developing training packages and research. As part of delivering services to school, Pupil School Support is also involved, a different service that can develop into training packages which educational psychologists undertake with educational social workers. Involvement of other practitioners in child development is also employed in the task, such as the involvement of a speech and language therapist (Janagal: Interview, 2008). The benefits of working with interagency is viewed in a manner in which a child is not seen in isolation, and the picture of the “whole” child is seen as the child interacts with other people outside the school, such as his family at home. Hence, increasing communication is important in order to build the whole picture. The practitioner can contemplate about what he may contribute to meeting the needs of a child. It goes with the notion that he cannot do it alone, but must involve other agencies. Conclusion Policy and practice developments have influenced the emphasis on prevention in children’s services in England (Garrett, 2007). It is apparent that the current New Labour in England is intent on the modernisation of children’s services, which is reflected in the program Every Child Matters: Change for Children. Specific areas that brought about change due to this program are services that are more business-like and are outcome-oriented. The government plays a key role in ascertaining that public bodies are clearly focused on the results that matter to people, alongside monitoring and reporting their progress in achieving these results with bureaucratic boundaries that are not permitted to get in the way of sensible cooperation. Just like the changing patterns of children’s services in England, geared towards better protection and enhancement of the welfare of children, the local government of England ensures that additional investment is conditional on achieving improved results through modernisation. It is clear that the landscape of children’s services is changing due to the new policies undertaken by the national and local government towards improving the welfare services of the nation. The children’s services have been transformed towards one, which can be described as rights-based, including being gendered for some. Practitioners have a corresponding task of ascertaining that these goals are put across effectively through interagency linkages and involvement, functioning as a whole. References Burdett, J., Birkin, C., Kent, V. and Ashton L. (2004) Research on consumer and family involvement in child and adolescent mental health services. Werry Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. University of Auckland, New Zealand. Daniel, B., Featherstone, B., Hooper, C., and Scourfield, J. (2005) Why gender matters for every child matters. Oxford University Press. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2007) Care Matters: Consultation Responses, London, DfES. Ellis, J. and Glaser A. (2007) What impact do NHS have on the provision of children’s services in England? The views of senior UK children’s nurses. Journal of Children’s and Young people’s Nursing. 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