Focus on making children safe
Birmingham City Council’s head of Children’s Social Care Colin Tucker gives his latest feed-back from the front line of improving the service.
Three separate activities which on reflection just about captures the complexity of what we are dealing with and illustrates some of the tensions.
The Improvement Board met recently and it was great to see the continued improvement in our performance indicators and also encouraging that managers lower down in the organisation came and did an excellent job of talking about how the improvements had been achieved.
Reflected on the fact that this is only outputs - the child protection system has emphasised compliance with timescales when of course what we most want is safe children. Sharp reminder of this when I went out on a section 47 visit with Sam from Civic House, Duty & Assessment Team. She was so skilled at eliciting really sensitive information from a vulnerable 12-year-old girl while at the same time working her way through some very complex information gathering and discussions with police and other partners.
Anyone who doesn’t think social work is a complex task that warrants professional status - and there are some who should know better - should have witnessed this.
Finally, my thoughts turn to the media. I have done a lengthy with the Guardian and shared my thoughts on what we are doing to improve and the fact that recent media coverage has made it very difficult for the very many staff in our service who are excellent at their jobs.
Despite the risk in giving so many interviews lately, I still believe we must benefit from opening up and sharing in more detail what we do. From understanding we perhaps change hostile public perceptions of social work.
BBC now want us to consider taking part a new series in which four celebrities would become attached for a week’s shadowing with a social worker and I guess it is worth exploring.
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