‘You're Just Treating Us as Informants!’ Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships in the Production of Children's Services Directories

Abstract

Local authorities in England are required to make directories of services available to practitioners working with children and young people. This is against a background of continuing reforms intended to ensure that services are joined-up around the needs and choices of children, young people and their families. There are high expectations that more of these services will be delivered by organisations from the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), especially services for groups or communities that public sector agencies find hard to engage. This article reports and comments upon a regional study focusing on the production of children's service directories involving service providers and commissioners, as well as the producers of directories, in a series of facilitated workshop activities. The study highlights tensions between local authorities and service providers around how information about services is controlled, edited and accessed. We argue that current approaches to the provision of directories are unlikely to have the transformational effects predicted by policy makers. This is partly because local authorities' traditional position (supported by the prevailing technologies) has meant that they have tended to monopolise the roles and responsibilities which in turn maintains their control of directory content. They do so in the face of increasing dissent from new and established providers. Moreover, current models of service directories fail to meet the emerging information needs of a range of stakeholders including service providers, service commissioners and service users. In conclusion we propose some questions to improve visibility and governance in the creation and maintenance of service directories.

Re-Mixing Digital Economies in the Voluntary Community Sector? Governing Identity Information and Information Sharing in the Mixed Economy of Care for Children and Young People*

“…This is potentially more complex for children and young people who are still trying to establish the social rules of the offline world and lack the critical evaluation skills to either be able to interpret incoming information or make appropriate judgements about how to behave online. (Byron, 2008: 5) The social, organisational and geographical scope and scale of any ‘register’ of children and young people large or small is such that the dyadic database approach represents an incomplete solution which will be subject to failure – this is not merely a technical issue but one of governance, quality and sustainability see (Walsh et al ., 2012). If the only solution presented and procured involves a system where data continues to be aggregated in a single database record the distinctions required to support the amelioration of complex ‘wicked problems’ that the ‘Mary's’ of the world face will not be possible.…”

Representing the family: how does the state ‘think family’?

“…2008; Wilson et al, 2011;Walsh et al, 2012). If we follow the drift of family studies and increasingly see family as something that one does, individually and collectively, rather than something that one has, then the haze might begin to clear somewhat.…”

“…If we were to move closer to a socio-technical model of the family, then what we need are tools that can help to support negotiation processes (including managing relationships and identity) among family members and between families, their members and the agents of the state in a governable manner where maintaining the separation of information is as important as integration (see Baines et al, 2010;Wilson et al, 2011;Walsh et al, 2012). Given we have established that there is no single view or point of truth about families, the development of such an information environment or infrastructure (Hanseth et al, 1996;McLoughlin and Wilson, 2012: forthcoming) might help in the effective negotiation of those risky freedoms that we need to really 'think family'.…”

New development: The challenges of designing municipal governance indicators

“…Provided that the pertinent decision-makers are effectively involved in the designing process (Walsh et al, 2012), the use of comprehensive Municipal Governance Indicators could promote good practices, raise awareness and increase the 'governance literacy' of citizens at little or no (financial) cost. The assessment model should be tailored-to-fit each specific country or region that wishes to apply it.…”