If we are to secure the best possible outcomes for these children, they must be at the forefront of how and why we commission the services they depend upon.

Local authorities have weathered funding constraints over recent years and are increasingly raising concerns about their ability to meet rising demand for services without sacrificing the quality of their provision.

Local authorities and independent providers have, to date, done an excellent job providing high-quality services with the budgets afforded to them. However, they will have no choice but to make further efficiencies in the future. It is essential, now more than ever, that the private, public and voluntary sectors come together to put forward solutions to efficiently meet the increasing demand for services while ensuring children and young people continue to receive the high quality, bespoke care they require.

In meeting this demand, the care that children receive must be all-encompassing and seen as a priority at both a local and a national level. It is vital that those with special educational needs, in foster care, or placed in a children’s home have their whole care and education pathway understood holistically by all agencies. This is essential to improving children’s outcomes and ultimately their overall wellbeing and life chances.

The work undertaken by the Children’s Services Development Group to develop a consensus-driven approach to children’s social care is a positive step. This type of collaborative working is vital if we are to truly tackle the issues in the system.

I welcome this report as an important contribution to the debate on children’s services. Its recommendations should be taken forward at both a national and local level, by government, local authorities and providers, to ensure we develop a truly child- centred, needs-driven approach to care and education for the most vulnerable young people.

Two sets of pressures are putting children’s services departments under considerable strain. First, demand for children’s social care is rising. Between2008 and 2015, local authorities saw a 22 per cent rise in referrals and a 16 per cent increase in the number of children in care. It is not only the volume of demand but the kind of demand that is exerting pressure: the needs of looked- after children are becoming more complex, and the introduction of Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs), although a positive move forward, require local authorities to think more creatively about how they will meet the needs of children with SEND. Second, local authorities are facing continued and severe cuts to their budgets. Between 2011/12 and 2014/15, spending by England’s local authorities on children’s social care dropped by 18 per cent, resulting in staff reductions, increased workloads and less support for foster carers.

In short, local authorities need to do more with less, and perhaps unsurprisingly many struggle to achieve the quality expected of them by the government and regulator. In some areas, outsourcing services to independent providers has been adopted as a potential solution, while in others, ‘externalising’ (setting upan independent trust) has been used. In some cases, these changes in governance have been forced on the local authority in response to what was seen as a failure in in-house delivery.

However, there is some concern about the use of outsourcing in children’sservices, particularly where it involves the use of for-profit providers. It is also a challenging undertaking to do well. Yet evidence suggests that when used correctly outsourcing has the potential to help local authorities deal with the pressures they face, drive up standards, and ultimately secure better outcomes for vulnerable children and young people. Pressures to do more with less are likely to be exacerbated now Britain has voted to leave the European Union – it is too soon to judge the full effects of the referendum result, but domestic funding will most likely be impacted, and planning in the short term will become more difficult. As pressure to improve outcomes under resource constraints increases, it is likely that so too will the number of local authorities opting to outsource at least part of their children’s services. With this in mind, this report looks at domestic and international examples to identify some of the features common to outsourcing which seem to be working well, and possible pitfalls to avoid, to help inform this rapidly developing agenda.

To read our report, please click here: CSDG & Demos Report – Commissioning in Children’s Services – What Works October 2016

However, there are significant changes taking place in local government. Across the country councils are transforming the way they work and the organisations they work with, at the same time as dealing with cuts of up to 40% in their budgets.

In these circumstances innovation is both necessary and extremely challenging.

This is particularly true in an area like children’s services, where the complexity and risk involved can be extremely high, where there is a minimum level of provision required and therefore an acute need to do more with fewer resources. But the focus on immediate problems needs to be balanced with a strategic and long-term outlook so that we give children and their families the support and care they need to grow into happy, healthy adults.

The recommendations in this report help to point commissioners in the right direction to begin to tackle some of these challenges.

The strategies outlined here are drawn from best practice across the country. They show local authorities how to open up the space for collaboration and partnerships and thus perform a vital shift from doing things to making things happen.

The new local government landscape will be one in which the council is a hub and catalyst for citizens, the state and civil society to work together. It will require multiple organisations to align at the local level, with shared goals and understanding. It will be based on relationships and networks within our communities. And it will need mutual trust for power to be shared.

To do this we need to support the innovators in local government and look for ways to replicate their good work. This report will help enormously.

To read our report, please click here: Children’s Services Taskforce – Final report