Social services departments - adults and children's: life after the great divide

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http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0396.htm
Breaking up is hard to do. Especially if it is a long-term partnership that, on the whole, has been successful. There is the issue of how things are divided and who moves out, while friends must decide to whom they owe their loyalty.
While these difficulties are true for personal relationships they are just as true for professional pairings, as social services departments have recently discovered.
The split between adults' and children's social services has been one of the most significant policy and practice changes to happen in social care in three decades. This structural and legal reorganisation is transforming the way local authority social services are planned, commissioned, financed and delivered to clients.
But what has the impact of this dramatic change been on services and outcomes for service users?
Dividing adults' and children's services into two separate directorates was first mooted after Lord Laming's inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié (see "The background", below). The idea was to ensure that all professionals working with children and their families operated from the same department, thereby making it easier to pool budgets so services could be funded more creatively and to conduct joint assessments instead of working in isolation.
But despite such laudable intentions, many in the sector had serious concerns about the consequences of such a move. The main worry was that children's social workers could become more distanced from issues that affect parents, such as parental disability or mental ill-health, while social workers dealing with adults would lack input on issues relating to children and child protection.
Jill Baker admits she had her doubts. She has been director of children's services at Salford Council since September 2005, and was the authority's director of education and leisure for three years before that.
"I'm a converted sceptic," she says. "I was worried about the weight of the responsibility and the whole agenda to be delivered. I still have concerns about the size of the task, but I'm convinced now this is the right way to go."
Baker and her adults' services counterpart, Anne Williams, began working on plans to divide Salford's social services department in September 2004 and took on the roles of directors designate the following month. Doing this, Baker says, enabled them to work out how the two directorates would operate, what staff and services were needed and how they would continue to meet clients' needs. The pair hosted meetings jointly and co-chaired the change management group, emphasising that "there won't be any rivalry" between the two new departments.