The head of an independent education provider working with troubled youngsters explains the complexities of collaborating with local authorities.
“I began my career in youth work, then became a social worker in care homes before joining a major English city council to coordinate the education of children in care. Some years ago I left the council to found a company that works with pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and other children the mainstream schools can’t handle; we’re commissioned by council SEN departments, schools and, sometimes, by social work departments.
These kids are often very disengaged and many have suffered problems such as abuse, turbulent home lives, drug use: we try to understand their needs and offer a combination of learning – everything from classroom teaching to educational day-trips – and support work. The aim is to work on their motivation and aspirations, engage them with learning, raise their confidence and get them moving again.
When I worked within councils few services were commissioned out to providers like ours, but things have changed in recent years. The Department for Education’s 2008 Back on Track white paper improved councils’ understanding of how specialist providers can help. By using us, local authorities can avoid carrying all the overheads of an in-house service, for example, and because they’re paying us we have to be accountable and provide a certain level of service – whereas in a council service, if somebody goes on holiday a child may not see anyone for a couple of weeks. What’s more, we’re not seen by the kids as part of the authorities, so they accept us more easily and we can act as an honest broker between them and other agencies.
The process of securing this kind of work is extremely onerous and massively time-consuming, though. A few years ago procurement processes were quite ad hoc, and they did need tightening up as volumes increased – but some of these rules are just about councils covering their arse. We’re on a buying framework now, but it took me a month of solid work: at the end, I didn’t leave the office for five days!
Even when we were accepted on the framework, because we’re a small organisation and we’d been ploughing all our profits back into the company the system rated us as a financial risk and recommended our work be reduced. That could have put us out of business, and the council had to bend their own rules to keep giving us work: they took us aside and told us that they see us as a core service, and we shouldn’t worry about the risk rating. Meanwhile, the local city college had just cut all their under-16s provision, but because they’re a big organisation they got a good rating – so they got a lot of work, then just took a slice and outsourced it all. Surely it would have been better to commission smaller bodies directly!
Even now we’re on the framework, there are still complexities in working with the council. Data protection rules mean that officials can be reluctant to share information with us, and sometimes central targets make it difficult for the council to take advantage of one of our biggest strengths: the flexibility we have to do what’s best for each child. What’s more, we have to compete with some organisations that are given buildings or other help by the council, so they’re effectively subsidised and can put in very low bids; that doesn’t make it easy to compete.
On the other hand, the council has established a forum for providers on the framework, and that’s really useful. We’ve started working much more closely with other providers, and that’s allowed us each to specialise and to join up what we’re doing; we’re even looking at developing shared qualifications, so young people who use a range of educational services can come out with a single qualification.
It’s difficult to build that kind of collaboration with council services, because local authorities always seem to be being reorganised. When organisations are constantly being reformed, people tend to think: ‘Well, we know what we’re doing within our own department, so let’s focus on that rather than trying to link up in this new way.’ After all, they know that everything will change again soon!
The irony is that councils are always asking how we’re going to work in partnership with them. It’s part of today’s rhetoric, much of which sounds good but has limited follow-through. It’s the same with the government’s talk about getting rid of central targets. The principle is great, as long as you can find ways of demonstrating results – but I suspect that things will move that way, then someone will say: ‘Hold on, people need to show us what they’re doing,’ and it’ll swing round again. Anyway, councils could help us in all kinds of ways – with training, for example, or by agreeing data-sharing protocols or holding regular meetings. So the question shouldn’t always be how we’re going to work in partnership with the council: sometimes, we should ask how they’re going to work in partnership with us!”