First, it reminded me what an achievement it was to put together a peice of legislation that has generated such widespread support. And second, i think it is enormously revealing about the challenges of implementing the ideas behind the leglislation.

The reason i think it is so revealing is that many professionals are still having enormous trouble coming to terms with the practical ramifications of new ways of working.

Many professional practices are deeply ingrained, rooted in years of training and experience. They are difficult to change. As a result, there is often a gap between the (genuine) support for Every Child Matters at a philosophical level and the changes in practice that will be required to achieve this on the ground.

And this is expecially true if people can’t see the link between the broad aims that they support and the changes that they are being asked to make to their practice. It seems that even widely supported programmes of reform can easily be overridden by the power of professional identities.

So what to do? The response is often to look for holes in the legislation: does everyone have a duty to cooperate? Are all the incentives and accountabilities in place? These strategies clearly have their part to play, but if we understand the problem (and therefore solution) to be one rooted in professional identities, rather than professional motivations, then perhaps that leads to a new emphasis.

So the new emphasis (i think, at least) needs to be on the role that professionals can play as partners in reform, and the possibilities that can emerge for collaboration, based on clear sets of outcomes agreed at the local level. This is where the opportunity lies to connect ieals with real outcomes, with practice.

This is something that Demos has been working on for the last year, and is continuing to explore at the moment If you're interested in following it up, there are some links to various pieces of work below:

An article that I wrote (as part of this project) on ‘local professionalism’ is here.

And the project we have underway on collaboration here.

Well, after some more research and a case study of some fascinating work going on in Bexley, i have an aticle in Society Guardian that develops that idea further.

Local professionalism is more than localism - it sees professionals not just responding to locally set targets, but being involved in the process of assessing need, and negotiating targets themselves. Managerialism, whether decentralised or not, is replaced by an approach that deliberately blurs the boundaries between policy makers and professionals.

By drawing heavily on what it means to be a professional on Merseyside or in Essex, new ways of working are beginning to emerge because of professionals, rather than in spite of them.

The full article is here anyway – let us know what you think...

I’ve been doing a bit of reading for a new project that we are starting with the IDeA, looking at how efforts in local authorities to re-orient services around the needs of users are disrupting professional boundaries, roles and status, and am struck by the suggestion that John Craig makes in the recent Demos collection on Professionalism that we may be witnessing the birth of local professionalism.

"Across children’s services, local responsibilities for workforce strategy and approaches to collaboration are enabling considerable national variation. As this grows the need for deep local reflection about what it means to be a teacher or social worker in Birmingham or in Knowsley"

Without getting too technical, this reminded me of the argument made by Jake Chapman that:

"in most cases individuals would become sufficiently open to a new way of thinking only when they became convinced that their previous approach had not, and would not, succeed".

So what? Well, it makes me wonder whether the strength of professional identity in children’s services adds weight to the idea that targets should be set locally rather than nationally.

Often we hear that targets are the problem, and localism is the answer. But perhaps what this all means is that the real strength of local target setting is that professionals (and young people) can be part of the process, rather than have it done to them. Then targets seem less like a series of arbitrary measures imposed from a distance, and are more like the are part of a process of adjusting to a new way of working that is being driven by - rather than in spite of - professionals in an area.

ps – we are on the look out for case studies for this project, so drop me an email if you are either dealing with issues like this, or know someone who is….

"The danger for Every Child Matters…lies not in an outright rejection from the people being asked to deliver it, but in the day-today difficulties of making it work on the ground. Entrenched patterns of professional behaviour lead to scepticism and distrust of the capabilities of professionals from other backgrounds. The temptation to return to familiar habits in the face of major uncertainty can be powerful."

Returning to look at professionalism in local authorities on this project, it's interesting to see how the evidence is building about what really needs to happen if ECM is going to ‘implemented’.

I’ve been reading this research (pdf) by the DfES and BMRB, which found that not only was awareness of ECM high – 90% of local government workers in children’s services have heard of it – but so is support. 72% think that ECM will improve outcomes for children to a ‘great’ or ‘some’ extent, whilst a further 15% thought Every Child Matters would improve outcomes to a small extent.

So ECM has high levels of support among those that really matter – the people delivering it. But read any report, or talk to people working in authorities and they tell you that new forms of partnership working and integration are still in the early stages. And this is often attributed to the difficulties of routing round old ways of working and ingrained professional cultures.

It’s going to be really interesting to look at how councils are mediating these tensions, through helping professionals adjust their habits and identity, as they make the leap from strategy to reality.