Graham Green blows away confusion over children's services report

Dec 4 2008 by Paul Dale, Public Affairs Correspondent

Birmingham’s Conservative group of councillors has a new star turn.

Craggy-featured Graham Green, who took Oscott from Labour at the last election, has two things going for him.

He is clever and he knows all about computers.That puts him streets ahead of most of his colleagues.

Green put the fear of God into officials at the vulnerable children’s scrutiny committee, with some forensic dissection of decidedly dodgy statistics.

Social services bosses had performed the usual trick of providing councillors with complex documents listing the department’s successes and failings.

The report featured traffic-light sequences of green, amber and red boxes depicting good, medium and appalling performance, but since the paperwork had been printed in black and white it was impossible to make out the failures from successes.

Green, as cool as you like, produced his own laptop computer which he proceeded to log into the council IT system, thereby allowing him to inspect a full colour version of the report.

He apparently has three computers, which is a little worrying, but never mind.

His colleagues were less than amused to learn that the black smudges on their reports were hiding some alarming trends about the council’s failure to assess children at risk within the recommended timescales.

Green’s questioning forced specialist services director Amy Weir to admit that social workers in Birmingham are overwhelmed by 800 reports a month of possible child abuse, and until April this year only bothered to record one in three incidents.

In addition, a number of the 1,100 children deemed by the council to be at risk of significant harm, are still living with their potentially violent parents more than two years after coming to the attention of social services.

How many children would that be, Green wanted to know.

Not many, Weir replied limply.

* * * * * *

Iron Angle has, until now, steered clear of commenting on the strange growth on the upper lip of Birmingham housing cabinet member John Lines, optimistically described as a moustache by colleagues.

When men of a certain age dramatically alter their appearance, it’s normally a case of attention seeking or a cry for help.

Most likely, he just can’t be bothered to shave. Poor show.

* * * * * *

Those infamous seminars to train-up Labour’s brightest young hopefuls have been going swimmingly, I hear.

A weekend session on how to be an effective city councillor was treated to a cameo performance from Sir Albert Bore, who distributed photocopies of Iron Angle’s article exposing unrest within the Birmingham Labour group about being forced to attend said seminars.

How, Sir Albert enquired of his trainees, would you construct a response to this type of negative press article?

A good question. Unfortunately, a response is still awaited.

The lessons haven’t been that successful, clearly.