Subtract… be incisive ‐ here, borrow my knife
| Pages | 2-3 |
| Published date | 12 March 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.5042/jcs.2010.0112 |
| Date | 12 March 2010 |
| Author | Michael Little,Nick Axford |
Journal of Children’s Ser vices • V olume 5 Issue 1 • March 2010 © Pier Professional Ltd
2
10.5042/jcs.2010.0112
children’s services have paid scant attention to the
‘what works’ literature, to cost-benefit analysis
that will save money in the longer term or fast-
improving knowledge about how to innovate and
implement new ideas successfully. This is not the
moment to compound the old felonies.
So, in this edition we welcome UK MPs from
opposing parties, Graham Allen and Iain Duncan
Smith, and support them in their appeal for
an apolitical approach to prevention and early
intervention to sustain and develop recent small
gains. Despite a decade of progress in these areas,
with the US leading on the science and the UK
government giving cash and rhetoric to the cause,
evidence of effectiveness still plays a bit part in
the children’s services decision-making process.
It would be a tragedy if the guttering candle were
now to be snuffed out.
It need not be. Most innovation involves
addition. Where once was a void we now see
children’s centres, the Common Assessment
Framework, Contact Point, the Children’s Fund, a
new profession of primary mental health worker,
and much more.
But there is also a spirit of innovation to be built
on ‘subtraction’. If services must be withdrawn,
they might be withdrawn in a sufficiently intelligent
way that we find out more about their impact on
child outcomes. Consider the game of ‘Jenga’,
in which players build a tower of interlocking
wooden blocks and then take it in turns to remove
them one at a time, keeping the tower standing
for as long as possible. Some components of the
children’s services edifice are likely to be ‘more
vital’ to the efforts to improve child well-being than
others. This might be a moment to analyse the
essentials – and the breaking-strain.
In this vein, June Thoburn writes about the
need to learn more about the impact of what she
calls ‘services as usual’ alongside the continued
As 2010 dawns, children’s services are steadying
their collective nerves for spending cuts that
threaten to be the deepest in living memory,
despite cries from some respected economists
that to squeeze public expenditure in these difficult
times is fiscal madness.
Some 30 years ago, it was one of the
contributors to this edition, Roy Parker, who
brought to light a simple but telling characteristic
of welfare economics: in a boom there is more
money for public services and so more are made
available; when the economy is suffering – and
need is greatest – the service response contracts.
Some policy-makers won’t be aware of this
dangerous paradox as they embark on the
thankless task of scaling back. They will try to
do what seems the decent thing by asking all
departments to bear an equal share of the pain.
A few may get the message and recognise in
the dreadful forecast an opportunity to invest in
children’s lives.
A sensible strategy would acknowledge that
the economic downturn will so aggravate future
need that it is worth banking now to prevent it,
even in the context of an overall budget cut. If,
for example, a local authority is looking for 20%
reductions over five years, it may seek slightly
larger than necessary cuts per year to build a small
investment fund of, say, 5% of turnover.
There are many ways in which such a fund
might be used. As the Journal’s editors we have
encouraged a stream of articles examining the
use of evidence-based programmes and how they
can properly be implemented inside mainstream
systems. We want an end to short-sighted
strategies that leave good science fighting for life
in the backstreets of pilot projects and fleeting
community experiment.
In these deteriorating conditions, this is doubly
important. Even in good times, too many in
Subtract… be incisive –
here, borrow my knife
Michael Little and Nick Axford
The Social Research Unit, Dartington, UK
Editorial
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