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For Scotland's children report

Chapter 7 the planning framework

The Scottish Executive requires local authorities, health services and their partners to develop, monitor and review a number of plans relating to children's services. In some cases the requirement is enshrined in statute. There are plans which relate directly to children's services, plans of a more general nature with implications for children and an agency's own internal planning arrangements. This section of the report identifies the range of plans covering children's services, the overlaps and duplication between plans and the action which is currently being taken to rationalise planning arrangements in relation to children.

Plans with Direct Implications for Children's Services

Local authorities are required by statute to produce two plans that directly impact upon children's services. Local authorities have to produce a Children's Services Plan, required under Section 19 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, and the Scottish Executive, in addition, requires local authorities to produce an Early Education and Childcare Plan which demonstrates how the Government's green paper, Meeting the Childcare Challenge - A Childcare Strategy for Scotland is being taken forward at a local level and how childcare strategy funds are being used.

The Executive also require local authorities to produce outline proposals on how they intend to use Sure Start resources, a funding stream within GAE which aims to promote the personal growth and development of 0-3 year olds and provide support for families with very young children.

Children's Services Plans, Early Education and Childcare Plans and the allocation of Sure Start funding are likely to involve a number of agencies. These include relevant local authority services, local health services, the voluntary sector and local community groups, and in the case of the Early Education and Childcare Plan the Local Enterprise Company and the private sector.

The Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000 places a responsibility upon local authorities to publish plans showing improvement objectives for their areas against national priorities. The Act also requires local authorities to produce a plan for each school for which they are responsible, taking account of local improvement objectives.

Planning Requirements with Implications for Children's Services

A number of planning arrangements exist which do not directly address children's services but will have implications for those services or require an input from those services. Local authority led plans include:

• The Community Plan
• Community Care Plan
• Community Learning Plans
• Community Safety Plan
• Criminal Justice Plan
• Youth Crime Plan
• Housing Plan
• Road Safety Plan.

Health led plans include:

• Local NHS Plans
• Health and Homelessness Action Plan.

Whilst plans may be led by either the local authority, health boards or trusts, it is likely that plans will be produced on a partnership basis with health services playing an active role in the development of many local authority led plans. Other partners which will play a key role in the development, monitoring and review of the range of plans are the police, the Reporter, the local and national voluntary sector, colleges of further education, local enterprise companies, careers services and other public bodies such as Scottish Homes.

Internal Planning Arrangements

The Best Value regime expects local authorities to put in place a performance management and planning framework which sets out the various planning arrangements at each level of the council, how performance against plans will be monitored and reviewed and reported to stakeholders. The requirement to provide Best Value in the delivery of services will become a statutory requirement placed on all public bodies.

Local authorities and other public bodies therefore have their own internal planning arrangements. A local authority could have:

• A Corporate Plan linked to community planning objectives which sets out the council's corporate priorities,
• Service or departmental plans which translate corporate priorities into actions within the department and
• Sectional or team plans which break down service/departmental plans into relevant work plans.

The Rationalisation of Planning Requirements

The sheer number of statutory, cross cutting and internal plans have created a complex web of linked and indeed overlapping plans which will inevitably lead to duplication in terms of both the content of plans, the agencies required to produce those plans and the consultation with appropriate stakeholders. The picture is further complicated by requirements to report on the use of ring fenced funding streams, and the need to be involved in partnership arrangements linked to plans and strategies. A local authority education service could play a role in all of the plans described above. To illustrate the complexity of the current arrangements, their input into the various planning arrangements, their requirement to report back on funding streams and their involvement in partnerships is set out in diagrammatic form overleaf.

The increasing planning obligations being placed upon local authorities and partner agencies have been acknowledged by the Executive. The Scottish Executive Policy Unit Review, Making a Difference - Effective Implementation of Cross-Cutting Policy, concluded,

"There is a good case for a fresh look at the range of plans required by the Executive, with a view to rationalising the total number. Agencies report overlap and duplication: that outmoded plans continue to be requested; and that too much effort is diverted from delivering services to producing documents for which there is little real benefit."

The Scottish Executive is currently consulting on the power of community initiative, community planning and political restrictions on council employees. The consultation document acknowledges the considerable burden imposed by planning requirements:

"There has been a marked increase in the number of partnerships and strategies affecting communities. A number of these have issued from central government in a relatively uncoordinated fashion and may overlap with each other. In a number of areas the resource required to service the burgeoning number of strategies has become a considerable burden on local agencies and, in particular, the community/voluntary sector, and there would appear to be considerable scope for rationalisation and streamlining of these strategies and partnerships."

The paper goes on to ask:

"Would there be merit in making arrangements to help streamline and rationalise the number of new strategies, plans and/or partnerships which impact on communities?"

There is clearly recognition that the number of overlapping planning arrangements is becoming onerous. As a result, some steps have been taken in relation to rationalising the planning arrangements around children's services. In correspondence to local authorities and other bodies, Gillian Stewart's letter of 31st August 2000 included a report for consultation which stated that

"There is a general feeling both within the Executive and local government that planning requirements in relation to children's services could be simplified."

Some action has been taken to reduce the duplication around children's services planning.

• Early Education and Childcare Plans, and information relating to Sure Start have now been integrated into Children's Services Plans. The Executive is working with CoSLA, ADSW, ADES and the voluntary sector to develop a strategic framework for children's services that will incorporate strategic objectives and performance measures in relation to children's services and link directly to related education and health plans.
• Local Authorities have been given the option of rolling forward their children's services plans by one year or producing a full three-year plan. The option to roll forward the children's services plan will place authorities in a better position to accommodate the strategic framework.
• The requirement for Section 19 reviews of day-care services has been repealed in the light of the requirements on local authorities and their partners in relation to the childcare strategy.
• The Executive has recently written to local authorities asking for volunteers to pilot local outcome agreements in relation to children's services and educational services. Local outcome agreements would allow local authorities greater flexibility in the use of funding streams and would reduce the requirement for planning and reporting on the use of funds. Instead the Executive and the local authority would agree relevant outcomes to be achieved. This would go some way to reducing the planning and reporting requirements placed on local authorities.

Discussion

In discussions with various agencies, the issue of the multitude of planning arrangements has been raised a number of times. The comments made can be summarised, as follows:

• There are too many obligations on local authorities and their partners to plan and report back on action taken. These obligations are felt particularly, where LECs, health boards and local authorities do not have co-terminous boundaries. We met one LEC representative who was on three childcare partnerships.
• The Early Education and Childcare Plans and the Sure Start Plans were highlighted. Our consultees felt that the funding provided through the Childcare Strategy and Sure Start Scotland were relatively small amounts of money, compared to the overall resources spent on children's services, to merit a specific plan detailing how the money was spent.
• The current obligations place too much emphasis on process and not enough on outcome and take agencies away from the task of service delivery.
• The overlap and duplication around children's services result in the same agencies (and sometimes the same people from those agencies) meeting more than once to discuss the same issues for a slightly different purpose.

In terms of resolving some of these matters, there are a number of points which should be made. Community Planning demands that a local authority should identify local needs with partners and plan to meet those needs. Under Best Value a local authority should question both why and how it is delivering services. Both of these roles are at odds with the arrangements that the Executive has adopted in relation to ring fenced funding which is prescriptive and directive. If the Executive legislates to allow local authorities a power of community initiative, then the array of statutory planning requirements will appear further at odds with the greater flexibility accorded to local government. Those that we consulted felt that there were great opportunities, with the advent of community planning, to free local agencies from statutory planning responsibilities and allow them to develop their own planning arrangements and local partnerships to reflect local needs and local approaches. Those we consulted also welcomed the opportunity afforded by local outcome agreements and felt that they were, irrespective of this initiative, becoming more outcome focused; developing, for example, agreed outcomes between local authorities and health services rather than joint plans.

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