'Salami-slicing will not work'

Swingeing and short-sighted cuts to early intervention and preventative services for children and parents in the face of recession must be avoided at all costs, campaigners warned at a Guardian conference on the future of work with families on 24 February at the London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square. Clare Tickell, chief executive of children's charity Action for Children and one of the speakers, said that "salami-slicing" services would not work if the recession was to last 10 years, as some had predicted, and would simply lead to more serious problems in the future. "The best way to reduce the numbers of children who are most at risk is to intervene early and prevent things from happening, and we have to hold our nerve on that," she said."We don't want to throw away the progress we've made. We know that early intervention works." The need for services to provide evidence of their achievements in a harsh economic climate was highlighted by other speakers. Deborah Absalom, chair of families, parents and carers group C4EO and director of children and young people's services in the London borough of Bexley, spoke of the difficulties she faced in council meetings. "I'm fearful, when I'm in a meeting arguing for my children's services budget against the man with the drains and the recycling, that they [councillors and council officers] always want hard evidence. We have to be able to pass that test." Absalom added that the qualitative, long-term outcomes achieved by preventative services could be hard to demonstrate, but said the sector would need such evidence "more than ever" if the widely anticipated cuts to the public sector go through. Peter Duxbury, director of children's services at Lincolnshire council, agreed that working out ways to measure early intervention services was essential to their survival. "If managers can't measure what they are trying to do, they are just going to do what they can measure," he said. The government's Every Child Matters 2003 green paper, which merged children's services with education to create a single department in every council and increased joint working between agencies, was praised by speakers. They said professionals needed to integrate more in the recession, rather than panicking and returning to a silo mentality, as this was one of the best ways to obtain value for money. "Integration is the only game in town. There is no question mark over it. We have to do it. The question is how we do it," said Tickell. Positives The conference's afternoon session had a lighter tone. Deputy children's commissioner Sue Berelowitz told delegates that improved children's services and a more equal society could be positive side effects of the economic downturn. "The recession acts as a stimulus to do things better, do things differently and be more creative, and I hope this is what we can do," she said. If budgets are cut, as widely predicted, Berelowitz said there would be a need to focus on what worked and that this could lead to the closure of some services. She said that in the past there had been too many pilot progammes and that now ministers needed to roll out proven initiatives such as the Family Nurse Partnerships (intensive home visiting programmes for first-time young mums) even if this meant cuts elsewhere. Paul Ennals, chair of the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) and chief executive of children's charity the National Children's Bureau (NCB), also saw potential positives. He said the economic crisis could help change young people's aspirations and make them less focused on financial wealth. "Can we find a way of saying yes, [economic] growth is fine, but that's not the way we will value your achievement? Can we find a way for children and young people to be motivated by something much more sustainable and valuable to us?" he asked. Delegates left the conference clued up on how best to prevent their services from being targeted for cuts – and with the feeling that maybe, just maybe, something good for children and families could come out of these financially straitened times. Managing benefits: Education is the key Society tends to view benefits claimants as one homogeneous group, but shadow children's minister Tim Loughton told the conference that people's ability to manage their money varied greatly. Fresh from his appearance on Channel Four's Tower Block of Commons, where politicians swap their comfortable homes for council estates for eight days, Loughton spoke of the people he had met while living on an estate in Birmingham. Some were able to manage their benefits wisely, he said, while others could not. One family he met spent half their weekly benefit allocation on electricity: they kept an immersion heater on throughout the night in case they happened to need hot water; and ran a large fridge that contained only a jar of mayonnaise and a bottle of cough medicine. "They had the same size bill for their flat as I do for a five-bedroom house," he said. Paul Ennals, chair of the Children's Workforce Development Council and chief executive of children's charity the National Children's Bureau said the solution should be relatively simple. "How come some families can live on whatever their benefits are while others cannot? The difference is in their knowledge and practical skills." Ennals called for society to do more to teach young people about money and budgets to prepare them for adulthood. "It's a really important part of building resilience," he said.