National Children and Adult Services Conference: Keynote address from LGA Chairman Lord Porter

(* Prepared for delivery)

• Hi everyone.
• I’d like to start by thanking Bournemouth Council for hosting us this week.
• I’ve been here for many conferences and I always think it’s a shame that we don’t get to spend as much time at the seaside as your usual holiday makers.
• As always, I’d also like to say up front a big thank you to all of our sponsors who make it possible for this conference to happen.
• In particular, I would like to thank HC-One, who are our main sponsor this week.
• It’s not often that politicians are outnumbered on a local government stage but it’s great to kick off the conference alongside Alison and Margaret, who are the real experts here.

• The services you in this room deliver are two of the most important our councils provide:
  • You improve the life chances of our children and young people; and
  • You make sure people have the best possible support for their physical and mental wellbeing
• Yet we are meeting at a time when both adult social care and children’s services are at the very top of our “worry list”.
• If we don’t look after our older and younger people it’s bad for our residents, bad for our communities and bad for our services more widely.
• I don’t pretend to stand here knowing our adult’s and children’s services inside out, like Alison and Margaret and the rest you in this room.
• But what I do know is that councils across the country are picking up the pieces of Whitehall’s failure to properly invest in services that care for our communities.
• If we don’t give our vital statutory services the funding they need, the other things councils do are going to suffer.

• All councils have a role to play in supporting people of all ages to live their lives to their full potential.
• And it’s the role of politicians like me to help make sure you – the professionals – can continue to make that happen
• I lead a district council in the best patch of the country – South Holland – and even though my council doesn’t directly deliver care services, the work my team do, does make a difference.
• I couldn’t stand up here today and not mention my favourite topic – housing.
• We know that the number of specialist homes for older people will need to increase by 75 per cent by 2035.
• And we know that our young people can’t possibly get the best start in life if they are growing up in poor quality accommodation.
• There are other services that make a difference to people’s life chances too – leisure, parks and green spaces, libraries, regeneration, transport and infrastructure…the list goes on.
• Every good council is at the heart of their local area, delivering the services our residents rely on day in, day out.
• And it’s only councils that can bring partners and services together in the best interests of our communities.
• And if our residents aren’t happy, us local politicians are accountable to them at the ballot box.
• And we have definitely got our use out of those ballot boxes this year.
• The twelve months since the last NCAS Conference has seen another General Election, a hung Parliament and the Government getting things underway for our exit from the EU.
• As I have been saying, while the Government gets on with Brexit they can let us help keep the country running by letting us keep our money, and giving us the powers and resources we need so we can get on with the job.
• This is the best way we can make sure everyone, wherever they live, has access to the opportunities they deserve and the strong public services they need.
• This year councils across the country have shown real leadership in welcoming and supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children.
• Thanks to Saj listening to us, we helped get £2 billion of extra money for social care in the Budget. This was unprecedented.
• We’ve also had the promise of a consultation to put social care on a proper financial footing.
• And we fought to get fairer funding for all schools and more freedom to work with schools to set budgets locally.
• But pressures across all of our public services remain.
• You are doing the really difficult stuff and all politicians need to thank you for that.

• Over next year we need to shout even louder about our track record in delivering for our communities and why the Government needs to give us the funding and powers we need.
• At the LGA, everything we do is driven by our members.
• And whatever colour team we might play for, we come together as a single voice to shout about the things that matter.
• And children’s services and adult social care are two of our top priorities.
• Now it’s time for our national politicians and their tribes to come together to find the long-term solutions for these services.

• Keeping our children safe is one of the most important roles that councils perform.
• England and Wales remain some of the safest places in the world to grow up in and we should all be proud of that.
• But that doesn’t mean everything is ok.
• More and more, children and families find themselves in situations where they need support from their council.
• This is at a time when government cash to councils continue to reduce.

• Councils are having to move money that is meant for early intervention so they can spend it on protecting those in real danger of harm.
• Every child deserves a bright future and we can’t scrimp on services that make a difference before a family reaches crisis point.
• This short-term approach is happening in health too, where public health budgets are being cut.
• And the money isn’t there to make sure our young people get the mental health support that they need.
• Whitehall needs to think beyond its budgets for the next couple of years and work out where it can make a difference for the next twenty or thirty years.

• Bringing together health and care around people is the best way of making sure our services are working in the best interests of our residents.
• But this will never work if social care is seen as the poor relation of the NHS. It’s too important for that.
• Integration shouldn’t be about passing the buck or pinching the pennies, it’s should be about us all working together to get best possible help to the people who need it.
• We can’t have local services designed by people who don’t step a foot outside their office in Whitehall – people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

• Our doctors, nurses and healthcare staff are some of the best of our public servants.
• But it’s time to get a grip on the bureaucracy and waste in NHS England.
• In local government we balance our budgets and squeeze every last penny out of the shrinking purse we get.
• But health can get an extra £8 billion and manages to still overspend.
• And then it gets promised even more money for buildings and technology.
• How does that add up?

• No one's elderly parent or grandparents should be left in a hospital bed when they could be treated in the comfort of their own home.
• But when we look closer at the figures we can see that more people are delayed in hospital because they require further NHS services, than people delayed because they are waiting on council social care.
• This is all happening at a time when we are probably heading into another winter crisis.  
• At a local level, we need to share the best practice of those areas with the lowest delays.
• And nationally, the Government needs to realise that proper investment in social care stops people needing to go to hospital in the first place.
• Whitehall is making councils work with one hand behind their backs in education too.
• Now I wasn’t a fan of school myself. In fact, I did all I could to try and get away with not going to one.
• But now I’m older and hopefully wiser, I know the importance of a good quality education.
• Yet DfE figures show that more than 125,000 children face missing out on a secondary school place over the next five years, because of Whitehall’s short-sightedness.
• It makes no sense for councils to have the statutory responsibility for school places, but no control over where new schools are built or expanded and no power to force academies to take children if they refuse.
• Councils know their communities best, and need to be given the powers to make sure places are provided where they are most needed.

• We also need to make sure we have more of you in this room to deliver our frontline services.
• More of the dedicated people in this room, working hard for our communities day in, day out.
• Too many people are leaving social work, which means more expensive agency staff.
• The LGA has heard your concerns on this. We’ll soon be launching a Return to Social Work programme, in partnership with the Department of Health and the Department for Education.
• This should bring 100 experienced social workers back in to the profession by April.
• We’ll be offering them a free retraining course, and then we’ll be help them to find roles in councils.
• This will help cut recruitment costs for councils, reduce the need for agency staff, and bring passionate people back into the profession.
• We can’t deliver the world class public services our communities deserve without a high quality workforce, and we certainly can’t do it on a shoestring.
• If things continue as they are, local government will have a £5.8 billion funding gap by 2020.
• Over half of this is made up of the pressures facing our adult's and children's social care services.

• As if that isn't enough to contend with, apparently, we also need £1.3 billion just to stop care homes closing.
• We should be proud of the work we did together to get the £2 billion this year.
• It is helping to protect services older and disabled people and their carers rely on.
• But we need more if we are to make a difference to people's lives for years to come.
• This needs our politicians on the national stage to come together and agree, once and for all, how adult social care will be funded now and into the future.

• And if we are to make sure every child has the best start in life, we need to make sure they have access to the best possible services.
• We need to close the gap facing services that help children and families, and give us back the money that was cut from our early intervention budgets.
• We need an urgent review of funding for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
• And every council needs to have the support they need to perform at their best.
• All of our children deserve nothing less.
• We are calling on the Government to devolve funds to support a new improvement offer that is led by councils, for councils.

• The Government has a chance to put some of this right in its Autumn Budget next month.
• We are calling on the Government to meet the £5.8 billion funding gap facing local services by of the decade, including the additional pressures facing the care provider market.
• They should press ahead with their plans to allow us to keep 100 per cent of business rates.
• But this extra money should stay with us.
• That’s money raised by local councils, from local businesses, and should be spent on local services.
• And it should be used to make sure we can properly fund our existing public services.
• But however they plug our funding gap, the most important thing is that they do it now.
• It is too important to kick into the long grass and for us to be at this conference, a year from now, asking again for our public services to be properly funded.
• And I want to be clear today that when we get the money we need, it is for councils to decide where it is spent.
• We know our local areas and local people better than anyone in Whitehall, and we have the democratic mandate to serve our communities.
• Any money promised to councils shouldn't come with retrospective targets and conditions.
• And it needs to come with certainty so we can plan for the future and tackle the long-term challenges head on.
• So in conclusion, councils will continue to do everything they can to deliver the public services their residents need.
• But we can do even more if we are given the powers and funding we need.
• The challenges, and the solutions, will be discussed over the next 3 days.
• This conference is your opportunity to share best practice, debate the big issues, and take home ideas to your own patches.
• I’m now going to hand over to the real experts – Alison and Margaret – who will run you through their own takes on the big challenges facing our services.