Lancashire County Council is closing five Children's Homes saving £0.7 million a year. Their budget proposals say: Proposal 2. – Transforming care services – reducing the number of authority residential places and the number of adolescents accommodated in children's home provision. The proposal is to reduce the number of children looked after in children's homes, […]
Congratulations to my friend Shireen Ritchie, a Kensington and Chelsea councillor, on her well deserved peerage. In March I ran a piece about her work in the complicated but vital area of social workers drowning in paperwork. She has come up with some practical ideas on the Common Assessment Framework, the computer systems social workers use, […]
The Local Government Association is warning that Lord Laming's recommendation for a "formal initial assessment" of every child protection referral from other professionals could be counterproductive. They are concerned it risks further overloading the system. The LGA say only 13% of time to produce such an assessment is spent with the child or family – 87% […]
Wirral Council, a Labour/Lib Dem coalition led by Cllr Steve Foulkes, a Labour councillor. They seem to adopt the same approach as Haringey towards whistle blowers who expose failings in caring for vulnerable residents. Martin Morton, a council officer in Wirral, found that the Council was massively overcharging vulnerable residents, most of whom could not read or […]
The news from Doncaster has been pretty grim of late. A report has shown that an incident last April of two brothers, now aged 11 and 12, torturing two innocent boys was "preventable." The perpetrators of violence had themselves been growing up in a violent family. Social workers were very well aware of the situation but […]
Nevres Kemal, the social worker whose warnings about the failings of Haringey Council's Children Services Department were ignored by Ministers, is to sue the Council. It was six months after her warnings that Baby P died. Ms Kemal had applied to go back to work for the Council in response to an advertising campaign for […]
The Conservative MP Tim Yeo gave an interesting speechin the House of Commons on Wednesday denouncing the social work practices of Suffolk County Council. Often social workers are criticised for being too slow to remove children from their birth parents where this is necessary (and then often to slow to place the children for adoption, keeping […]
The recent post strike means that magazine deliveries have pretty erratic but Private Eye has now started arriving again. The latest issue includes an intriguing item about Tower Hamlets Council in its Rotten Boroughs section. The following internal email to Tower Hamlets staff has been leaked: "From Wednesday 11 November to Friday 20 November, the […]
The Daily Mail splash this morning on some extraordinary emails that have emerged as being sent to Sharon Shoesmith, when she was the Director of Children's Services. After she gave a press conference declaring that the Council was not to blame for the death of Baby P the Council Chief Executive Dr Ita O'Donovan took her […]
Cllr Les Lawrence, the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families on Birmingham City Council, responds to the call on this site yesterday that he should resign following a scrutiny report. It would, of course, be too much to ask that Harry Phibbs first check the background and context before jumping to judgement and making public comment. […]
I've been reading the report by Cllr Len Clark, Who Cares? Protecting Children and Improving Children's Social Care. It examines the state of the Councils social services provision for children in the City. This follows the provision being identified by Ofsted as "inadequate" and a number of children who have died, or been seriously harmed, despite […]
Vast time and money is spent on CRB checks for people who come into contact with children. These checks now cost £131 million a year. Often people have to have multiple checks in a bureaucracy spiralling out of control. The Lib Dems, to their credit, have highlighted the issue. The cost is not just financial. […]
Conservative-run Vale of Glamorgan Council has apologised for the "serious error of judgment" of their social workers placing a teenager in a foster placement with a family without advising them of his record of sexual assault. The teenager raped the couple’s two-yaer-old son and sexually assaulted their nine-year-old daughter. A Plaid Cyrmu councillor has called […]
Last month I went along to a briefing put on by the London Fire Brigade for representatives of borough councils in London from all parties. The fire commissioners used the meeting to raise practical measures Councils could take to help them to save lives. One message that came through loud and clear was to install […]
Shadow Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has announced that a Conservative Government would publish a "serious case review" for the first time into the death of a child under the care of social workers. He has secured the agreement of Birmingham Council to publish the report into Khyra Ishaq. Children’s Secretary Ed Balls opposes the idea […]