Under fire child protection boss wants £2m to improve services

Late last year, Doncaster Council children’s services was told that despite the strenuous efforts of social workers, its services were still inadequate, and among the worst in the country.

The damning verdict, delivered by watchdog Ofsted, coincided with a new report by Lord Carlile into the infamous Edlington attacks of 2009 in which two young brothers attacked two boys.

The Carlile report was ordered by Education Secretary Michael Gove, who had declared himself dissatisfied with a previous serious case review into the involvement of the council. Lord Carlile found that there had been some improvements in services since the attack by the brothers, who were in the care of social services at the time, but added more were required.

As a result of the situation, Doncaster Council’s ruling cabinet, currently struggling with huge Government budget cuts, will be asked to approve £1,982,000 over the next two years for the plan.

In a report to Wednesday’s meeting, Chris Pratt, the council’s director of children’s services, says both the Carlile and the Ofsted reports both have “major implications for children’s services”.

He said: “Both reports recognise that progress has been made, but not sufficient to have fully recovered the deeply broken service that existed in 2009 and in years prior to this.

“There remain major service failings in front-line child protection services, particularly too much poor professional practice. There are some key workforce issues that need to be tackled.”

Mr Pratt stressed that increases in caseloads, with workload increasing by more than 80 per cent in some areas, were partly to blame for the problems, with some social workers juggling 35 cases. It is understood that recruiting social workers is a major problem for the council because of its poor reputation, meaning a reliance on agency workers, who have no continuity with the authority.

Mr Pratt added: “We are using the Ofsted and Carlile reports to rethink and reinvigorate what needs to be done. Essentially there is a need to establish good and stable staff teams.”

He maintained his department has contributed £7.3m in savings towards the council’s £25.7m Government-imposed efficiencies for 2013/14, but added the new improvement plan is vital to addressing the Ofsted and Carlile reports.

He said: “Given the fundamental findings of the Ofsted inspection and Lord Carlile reports we did not that a ‘business as usual’ option was appropriate. The new improvement plan has stemmed from a thorough analysis of the situation in Doncaster including the findings and conclusions of Ofsted and Lord Carlile.”

The new plan is made up of 27 points under six headings which include improving professional practice, strengthening the workforce, strengthening leadership, management and governance and financial viability.

It is understood that a large part of the money required will be found from reserves held by the council, while grants provided by the Government for work with troubled families will also be used.

Doncaster Council is currently being run under the supervision of the Government, both because of concerns over child protection and because Ministers were worried about the running of the authority generally.

The intervention in the running of the council was supposed to end this summer, but in February it was announced the oversight would continue for at least another year.

At the time, chief executive Jo Miller said: “A slightly longer period of intervention should be viewed as an opportunity for us to continue to stabilise and drive forward improvements.”