Should children’s and adults services ever have been divided?

The argument about adult and children’s social work can easily become too nostalgic, as if everything worked better when social services sat together under one roof, with one director, one department and one professional identity. 

That version of the past is too simple. The old generic social services model was never as generic as we sometimes remember, and social work across the spectrum of children’s and adults’ practice had already developed its own knowledge and practice cultures.

In some areas, particularly older people’s social work, the old model did not always deliver enough social work at all. Too often it became about arranging services rather than working with people around rights, loss, family, identity, capacity, risk and community. 

The division of children’s and adults services came about following Lord Laming’s 2003 report into the death of Victoria Climbié. But was something lost? And can we reimagine a different, more integrated version of social work that would better serve individuals, families and communities?

The post-Laming gains

In asking this question, I spoke to a range of experienced social workers*. Those conversations helped test the argument against practice, not just memory or professional instinct.

The overall consensus is that social work does not need another top down grand restructure. It needs to find what already works, name it, learn from it and build from it. 

Good practice already exists in the system. Some of it is formal, some informal, and some remembered from when adults’ and children’s teams worked closer together. Reimagining social work should start with those examples rather than another abstract call for better partnership working.

Post-Laming, children’s social work has developed a sharper focus on safeguarding, child protection, family support, permanence and risk. Adult social work has also developed a stronger identity around rights, capacity, adult safeguarding, autonomy, carers, disability, ageing and end of life. 

Those gains need to be protected. Specialism is not the problem. The difficulty comes when specialism becomes separation.

What was lost

We know that children do not live in children’s services. They live with adults. Adults are not only adult service users. They are parents, grandparents, carers, partners, sons, daughters and former children. 

Families do not experience poverty, trauma, disability, domestic abuse, addiction, mental illness, exploitation or neglect according to our service structures. They experience them as life, and this is where separated systems can do damage.

Children’s social workers may understand the child’s risk but not fully understand the adult’s disability, capacity, trauma or care and support needs. Adult social workers may understand autonomy and the right to make unwise decisions, but not fully see the child living with the consequences. 

Both workers may be doing their job properly, but the family may still be badly served if the work does not come together.

The shared core of social work remains the best starting point. Social work is bigger than statutory tasks. It is about relationships, trust, listening, human rights, social justice, agency, protection, risk and people in their place. That shared professional base should come before arguments about legislation, thresholds and structures.

Some of what has been lost is very practical. In the past, children’s workers could often see more easily whether a parent was known to adult services. They could speak to the adult worker, sometimes across the office, and in some cases go out together. That did not remove complexity, but it helped build a richer assessment and a more rounded understanding of the family.

Separate systems, hybrid working, stretched services and different routes into support now make that harder. Workers may not know who to ask, or even what they are missing. It is not enough to tell people to communicate better. The better examples are where communication is built into the work itself.

Bridging the divide

Transitions give us the clearest place to look. For young people with SEND, disabilities or complex needs, transition is not simply a transfer from one team to another. It often changes the whole offer. 

Children’s services may work around education, development, short breaks, family support and childhood. Adult services may work around eligibility, personal budgets, capacity, independence and care and support. 

None of that is wrong, but families can still feel as if the ground has moved.

The strongest transition work seems to happen when children’s and adults’ services understand each other’s offer early enough to prepare the young person and their family properly. This means conversations before the cliff edge, not at the point of crisis. 

It means the right people being able to think together about the young person, the family, the risks, the hopes and the practical offer of adulthood.

Good transition discussions can do more than decide funding or eligibility. At their best, they help families understand what will change, what will not change and who will stay involved. 

They also help professionals understand each other’s language, duties and limits before a family is left carrying the confusion.

There is also a strong case for placing social workers across the boundary. An adult social worker spending time with a children’s disability team can help families understand adult eligibility, direct payments, capacity, care and support before the handover point. 

A children’s social worker working alongside an adult learning disability or transition team can help adult colleagues understand family history, school experience, safeguarding concerns, parental expectations and the young person’s journey. 

This is not a return to generic social work. It is specialist practice with better connections.

The same principle applies beyond transitions. Family Help models create opportunities to think more widely about the adults around the child. Multi-agency child protection arrangements can also create space to bring adult social care, adult mental health, housing and other partners into the conversation. 

The value is not in putting everyone in every meeting, but in making it normal to ask who else understands this family and what knowledge already sits in the system.

Some places already have cross-service meetings where adults, children’s services and wider partners look at overlapping families and themes. That kind of forum may sound modest, but it is exactly where useful practice can grow. 

It gives people a route to spot patterns, not just individual problems, and to see where family pressure, safeguarding concerns, caring responsibility, housing, mental health and transition cross the adult-child boundary.

Learning from what already works

Capturing good practice becomes important here. We do not need long reports that sit unread. We need short, practical examples that describe the family situation, where adults’ and children’s services both needed to be involved, what helped, what got in the way, and what people would do again. 

A small library of these examples would be more useful than another statement of intent about joint working.

The best examples are often ordinary. The children’s worker who knows to ask whether adult services are involved. The adult social worker who understands that an adult’s unwise decision may still have consequences for a child. The joint visit that helps both workers hear the same story. The transition discussion where the right services are in the room early enough to help the family. The manager who makes these connections expected rather than exceptional.

Importance of education and early careers

This also takes us into education and early career practice. Too many social workers make their first big career decision too early. They qualify, take the post that is available, and quickly become labelled as an adults’ social worker or a children’s social worker. Some thrive. Others find themselves in the wrong part of the profession and start to think social work is not for them.

A protected first year or two after qualification could give new social workers experience in more than one part of the profession before they settle. This could sit within a stronger early career development model. 

Newly qualified social workers could spend structured time across adults’ and children’s practice, with proper supervision, protected learning and a route into a permanent post. The aim would be to help them understand the profession before choosing where to deepen their practice.

This would not create generic social workers. It could create better specialists. A children’s social worker who has spent time in adult learning disability will understand parents with care and support needs differently. 

An adult social worker who has spent time in children’s safeguarding will think differently about family risk. 

A transition worker who understands both systems will be better able to prepare families for adulthood. 

A social worker who has seen more than one part of the profession will usually know more about who needs to be brought into the room.

It could also help retention. Too many social workers face a poor choice between staying where they are and burning out, or leaving the profession altogether. 

If a children’s social worker is exhausted by child protection, there may be value in supporting them to spend time in adult safeguarding, older people’s work, mental health or learning disability. 

If an adult social worker wants to move into family work, that should not feel like starting again. Movement across the profession should be treated as a strength, with the right learning and supervision around it.

Principal social workers (PSWs) could help make this practical. Adults’ and children’s PSWs are well placed to develop shared practice forums, not only when something has gone wrong, but as part of ordinary practice development. 

The same approach could work through ordinary team meetings, buddying, joint visits, shadowing days and shared supervision discussions. These are not dramatic reforms, but they are the kind of changes that alter practice because they alter relationships.

Departmental silos

There is a national point here as well. Children’s social work policy sits largely with the Department for Education. Adult social work sits largely with the Department of Health and Social Care. 

But the workforce is one profession, and decisions about bursaries, early career development, regulation, post-qualifying learning, leadership and workforce funding should be made with that in mind. 

If government wants a stronger social work workforce, it needs to treat social work as one profession with different areas of practice.

The same is true locally. We should look for the places where adult and children’s social work already comes together well, then make that practice easier to repeat. The good transition meeting, the joint visit, the shared supervision discussion, the worker who knows the other side of the system, the manager who creates the space for adults’ and children’s teams to think together. 

These are not small things. They are often the difference between a family feeling passed between services and a family feeling understood.

This is where reimagining social work becomes practical. We should capture examples of good whole-family practice and use them in supervision, team meetings and learning sessions. 

We should give newly qualified social workers broader experience before they specialise. 

We should make it easier for experienced social workers to move across practice areas without starting again. 

We should use transition work as a place to test better joint practice, because it is where the difference between systems is often felt most sharply by families.

Vision for the future

Post-Laming, children’s services have gained focus, and adult social work has gained depth and confidence. We do not need to weaken either. We need to connect them more deliberately, so that the child is seen in the adult’s life and the adult is seen in the child’s world.

The next stage of social work should be practical, optimistic and close to practice. It should start with the cases where we already know joined-up work makes a difference, then ask how we make that normal rather than exceptional. 

It should give social workers permission to learn across boundaries, move across the profession, and bring that wider knowledge back into their work.

That would be a better version of specialist social work. Rooted in strong areas of practice, but not trapped inside them. Confident in the law, but not limited by the service route. Focused on risk, rights and protection, but still able to see the whole person, the whole family and the community around them.

That is what we should build next. Not a return to the past, and not another restructure, but a more connected profession that learns from what already works and has the confidence to grow it.

Robert Templeton is a social worker who has worked in frontline and management roles within adult social care

*Lyn Romeo CBE, former chief social worker for adults in England, Dez Holmes, director of Research in Practice and strategic director for Practice and Programmes at the National Children’s Bureau, Claire Collins, head of Locality, Family Help and Integrated Front Door at Central Bedfordshire Council, and Daniel Newbolt, service director for Education and SEND at Central Bedfordshire Council.