Introduction

Public service reform was one of the dominant themes of Labour's second term. The Party leadership and senior ministers expressed concern about the perceived slow implementation of new policy initiatives even before the election victory in 2001. Moreover, reform was deemed necessary to ensure that significant increases in public spending in key areas such as health and education, announced in the 2000 Spending Review, were not wasted (Driver and Martell, 2006: ch 5). Following the Children Act 2004, all local authorities in England were required to merge education and children's social care services in order to create new children's services departments led by a single DCS. In the government's official narrative, this structural change provided a direct response to the Victoria Climbié inquiry (Lord Laming, 2003). This chapter begins to question this claim by examining the earlier development of structural reform proposals in the context of wider debates within the government regarding public services reform.

To begin with, it is necessary to consider the dual role played by local authority social services departments to protect children and to support families. Under Labour's Modernising Social Services programme (DH, 1998a), new performance objectives and targets were introduced but structural reform appeared to have been ruled out. However, following the SEU's (2000) review of policy on services for 13 to 19 year olds, chaired by the then Home Office minister Paul Boateng, this position was challenged. The second section of the chapter discusses this shift. The background to Lord Laming's (2003) inquiry and his recommendations for structural reform are then examined in the third section. As Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn held responsibility for social services and had agreed to establish Lord Laming's inquiry.