Law, Policy and Practice for Working Together

1
Law, Policy and Practice for Working Together

• Responsibilities, Challenges and Opportunities

2
Legal Rules

• Primary Legislation (Acts of Parliament)
• Secondary Legislation (Regulations or Statutory
  Instruments)
• Policy Guidance
• Practice Guidance
• Case Law (House of Lords and Court of Appeal set
  precedents)
• Review agency procedures against the above

3
Modernising Social Services

• Promoting independence
• Focus on outcomes
• Improving protection
• Raising standards - quality
• Accountability
• Working together
• Responsive and needs-led
• Pragmatic - what works - not ideological

4
Opening Propositions

• Experts by experience want effective
  collaboration
• Collaboration is central to effective prevention,
  care and protection
• Effective collaboration at the front line is
  crucial to partnership between services

5
Working Together

• Health Act 1999 and Health and Social Care Act
  2001 - new organisational forms and skill mixes
  for health and social care
• Children Act 2004 - childrens trusts, bringing
  together education and social services with
  families
• Working Together (DfES 2006)
• Emphasis on flexibility responsiveness,
  services to meet changing needs

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Children Act 1989

• Sections 27 47 power for social services to
  seek assistance duty on agencies to comply if
  request reasonable
• Divergent priorities, blurred roles, financial
  constraints, competitiveness
• Poor outcomes
• Law and guidance insufficient to ensure working
  together

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Lesser Known Legal Mandates

• Disabled Persons Act 1986 duty on education and
  social services to co-operate with respect to
  young disabled people approaching adulthood
• Data Protection Act 1998 power to share
  information to prevent abuse neglect
• Community care law applies to disabled children
  and disabled parents

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Additional Duties Children Act 2004

• A duty on local authorities to make arrangements
  to promote co-operation between partner agencies
  and other appropriate bodies, including voluntary
  organisations and community groups to improve the
  well-being of all children and young people
• A duty on partner agencies to co-operate with the
  arrangements made by local authorities and an
  expectation that other relevant bodies, such as
  voluntary organisations should do so

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Further Children Act 2004 Duties

• a duty on specified agencies to make sure their
  functions are discharged having regard to the
  need to safeguard and promote the welfare of
  children
• duty to ascertain/give due consideration to
  childs wishes and feelings when considering what
  services to provide under section 17 of the 1989
  Act. (c.f. CA89 s20)
• requirement of childrens services to establish
  databases on all children to support
  professionals in working together and sharing
  information to identify difficulties and provide
  appropriate support

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Opportunities and Challenges

• Responsive to need
• Co-ordinated
• New ways of working, evolving identities
• New skill mixes
• Similar values goals
• Joint training
• Knowledge informed

• Resource driven
• Fragmentation
• Old hierarchies, collusion exclusion
• Protectionism
• Divergent values
• Separate education
• Knowledge disputed

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Responsibility Linking Lived Experience to
Organisational Learning

• Learning from each other
• Connecting our learning with our leadership,
  staff development, and organisational change
• First and second order change

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Counteracting Barriers to Partnership

• Knowledge of the legal mandate
• Connecting different legal rules
• Corporate parenting
• Case law on resources eligibility criteria
• Partnership values
• Focus on what experts by experience value
• Committed individuals agency support
• Staff development that appreciates
  distinctiveness, promotes equality builds
  common sense of purpose
• Practice as a site of research

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Shift of Mind
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Professor Michael Preston-Shoot

• Dean
• Faculty of Health Social Sciences
• University of Bedfordshire
• Park Square
• Luton
• LU1 3JU
• michael.preston-shoot_at_beds.ac.uk