Birmingham’s political head of Children’s Social Care Cllr Len Clark acknowledged “more needs to be done” to improve safeguarding in the city.
Cllr Clark announced he was leading an immediate “re-alignment” of the service to address priority issues identified by Ofsted during a recent inspection.
Actions already taken to improve safeguarding include:
- Deployment of additional high-quality social workers to the front-line of duty and assessment.
- Reducing caseloads by a third by transferring cases of children who do not require child protection intervention to new family support teams.
- Accelerating moves of social work teams to modern, purpose-built offices, including staff at the Aston office who will now move by the end of the year instead of next spring.
Ofsted recognised there was now “energetic and visible leadership” within children’s social care.
Inspectors said considerable progress has been made in services for children in care (looked after children) and noted “concerted action” has improved the quality of residential care. The number of children’s homes judged “inadequate” has fallen from seven to none.
Fostering and adoption services were praised and the report noted improvements to the quality of serious case reviews.
Birmingham was issued with an Improvement Notice by the Government in February 2009. Ofsted said progress had been made in most of the areas identified by the Government.
However, the report concludes significant weaknesses and deficiencies remain in safeguarding which it labelled “inadequate”.
Cllr Clark said: “We know we are not good enough yet, we know more needs to be done and we know what we have to do to improve.
“But there is no quick-fix solution to the problems faced in an authority the size of Birmingham.
“Birmingham has a track record of turning around services and there is determined political will to resolve this issue and achieve our goal – a world-class children’s social care service.”
Cllr Clark vowed the authority would make the same progress in safeguarding, as has been made improving the lives of children in care.
Council bosses are currently drawing up blueprints for a longer-term remodelling of children’s social care aimed at introducing sustainable changes.
This will include accelerating a groundbreaking shift in focus towards early intervention and preventative work aimed at nipping family problems in the bud before they escalate.
Leadership within the service has been strengthened with the appointment of Cllr Clark as Executive Member of Children’s Social Care in June and Colin Tucker as director of Children’s Social Care last year.
Three further assistant director posts have also been created within the service. A recruitment drive is now underway to replace Strategic Director of Children’s Services, Tony Howell, who earlier this month announced plans to retire in January 2011.
Mr Tucker said: “I understand the sense of frustration people may feel – we all are impatient when it comes to ensuring the safety of children.
“But our will and determination to improve remains strong. Yes, we still face many challenges, but that will not deter us from fulfilling our ambitions. This is a ‘can-do” city and we will do what needs to be done.
“Increasingly we are attracting high numbers of competent and enthusiastic newly-qualified social workers who are choosing to start their careers in this city.
“Similarly, high quality managers also now want to work here. This will ensure we continue to improve in a sustainable way.”
Notes to Editors
- Birmingham City Council’s children’s services was judged “adequate” overall in December 2008, but downgraded to “inadequate” for safeguarding – one of six areas inspected.
- Following this, Birmingham City Council set up a top level Task Force chaired by Council Leader, Cllr Mike Whitby to improve the service.
- One of its first actions was to order an in-depth internal scrutiny inquiry into children’s social care chaired by Cllr Len Clark.
- The hard-hitting scrutiny report was made public in September 2009 and set out in detail shortfalls within the service.
- Birmingham City Council has ring-fenced the budget for children’s social care to ensure funding is available for the improvement drive.
Improvements made in the last year include:
- Managers at every level of social care have undergone or will be undergoing training to identify more effective ways of addressing problems contributing to poor performance.
- Staff in both front-line duty and assessment and looked after children’s services have undergone training to create higher standards of recording and practices.
- Social care front-line teams are in the process of being re-located into modern, high quality office accommodation – for example 17 front-line social care teams south of the city recently moved into a purpose-built centre, Lifford House.
- Sickness rates have dropped from an average of 25 days per full-time equivalent member of staff within Children’s Social Care from July 2008 – July 2009 to 16.9 from July 2009 – April 2010 (lastest figures available).
- There has been a reduction in the vacancy rate within the Children’s Social Care workforce from 23 per cent in December 2009; 20 per cent in February 2010 to 15 per cent in April 2010 (latest figures available). This is down from 180 vacancies out of 750 qualified full-time social workers to 100.
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