Cases of public sector fraud and data manipulation are set to increase over the coming months as government spending cuts put more pressure on managers to meet performance targets, experts have warned.

Ian Elliott, who leads the government and public sector forensic services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, told Public Finance that data manipulation was on the rise in public sector organisations in the face of tighter budgets, particularly among NHS trusts striving to meet waiting list targets.

His practice was experiencing a 50% increase in investigations compared with this time last year, with many cases larger in size too .

More at:

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2009/10/spending-cuts-will-increase-fraud-say-experts/

New research suggests the number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% since 1974.

A Bournemouth University study says the death rate is the fourth lowest in the Western world.

It says better monitoring by social workers and improved liaison between health visitors, paediatricians, GPs and police had led to the drop.

The BBC news report can be f ound at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8497277.stm

The most valuable resource that councils have is their staff. This was recognised by the Laming report and the Task Force report contained a number of good recommendations which if implemented would make a real difference.

The Social Work Reform Board which met for the first time this week had a constructive first meeting at which Aspect was represented by Roger Kline.

Three elephants crowded into the room. the first was the uncertainty caused by the imminent General election. The second one was the view that local councils should not be bound by prescriptive national standards. And the third was the financial pressures on local authorities.

Politicians have been been claiming that front line  services will be protected and it will be “less essential” “back room” services that will be affected but as Birmingham childrens services staff found out last week this rings a little hollow when hundreds of front line jobs are threatened.

In explaining the miserable decision to offer O% in a week when inflation rose sharply and when staff are facing increases in pensions and national insurance contributions, Local Government Employers managing director Jan Parkinson said: “The decision not to offer employees an increase in basic pay this year has not been taken lightly.

“Councils are facing a perfect storm of falling revenues and increasing demand for services. Up and down the country, councils have already been forced to cut thousands of jobs to balance the books. Town halls have been swept by the cold winds of recession for more than a year and that means difficult choices have to be made.”

Much is made of  the distinction between “front line” staff and others when cuts are discussed. This is often meaningless.  Are administrative support staff working with social workers not essential if the administrative burden on social workers is to be reduced? Are IT staff not essential if front line staff are not going to waste even more time due to a combintion of inappropriate IT systems and poor equipment?

Social services have bizarrely been excluded from the protection offered to education and health services. The consequences threaten to be dire, not just for staff who will be expected to do more for less, but for services.

We await with interest the government’s Task Force report Implementation Plan which will seek to square this circle

Even before the effects of the Pre Budget Report take effect, councils are cutting recruitment and training budgets for social work and other social care roles as they grapple with recessionary pressures.

A Community Care survey has found that more than one in 10 have already cut recruitment budgets for social workers this year while the same proportion will do so in the next financial year and another 20% are discussing it.  Read more at

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/12/01/113300/councils-plan-training-and-recruitment-cuts.htm

Meanwhile the Department for Children, Schools and Families has been told to save £350m in the PBR and .

The savings are supposed to come from central budgets, non-departmental public body efficiencies – affecting the Children’s Workforce Development Council, the Children’s Commissioner and family courts body Cafcass – as well as reviewing pilots and programmes to focus on the most effective interventions.

At the same time  extra funds were announced for free school meals which will be extended to 500,000 more pupils with parents on low incomes.