Social Services Report: Key findings into the failings of Birmingham Social Services
This is the report of the key findings from the Birmingham City Council report into its social services department. A link to the full report can be found at the bottom of this article
Social workers play a leading role but they cannot be effective on their own. They rely on support and co-operation from other agencies and professionals and on having the appropriate technology and equipment, access to supervision and enough time to devote directly to the families and children they are there to help.
Recent events have shown that much more needs to be done to ensure that the services work together as effectively as possible to achieve positive outcomes.
Many of the areas which need improvement in Birmingham City Council are national issues.
The work of this Inquiry was carried out against the background of the national Social Work Task Force which was set up by the government to undertake a comprehensive review of frontline social work practice and to make recommendations for improvement and reform of the whole profession.
Many of the obstacles to the delivery of consistently high quality social work set out in the interim report of the national Task Force were also reflected in the findings of the Inquiry.
The main findings of the Inquiry were as follows:
• Lack of capacity at senior management level was highlighted as a major risk.
• The performance management culture and practice is variable across areas and teams.
• Improving performance management will require improved management information systems to provide accurate information and also improved training and development. The learning and development resource is inadequate and not fit for purpose which hampers the retention of staff because of the lack of ongoing professional development.
• Recruitment and retention of staff, especially of experienced staff, is a key area for improvement in Birmingham and capacity issues continue to hamper progress towards improvement.
• The capacity deficit is more serious than just the vacancy rate when sickness absence rates, poorly performing staff and those who have resigned but are working out their notice are included in the statistics. Over reliance on agency staff also exacerbates staff shortages and adversely impacts on budgets.
• The working environment is an important element adversely impacting on the children, young people and families we serve and the staff we employ. Inquiry Members were shocked and dismayed at the standard of accommodation at some sites.
• In terms of social work process and practice there is a lack of clarity about contacts and what constitutes a referral and which referrals should receive an initial assessment. There is concern that the screening of referrals is done by inexperienced staff with insufficient management oversight.
Various problems with the CareFirst system were reported to the Inquiry which was generally not 05 Report of the Inquiry into Protecting Children and Improving Children’s Social Care, 13th October 2009 perceived as being user friendly.
The result is that social workers spend a high proportion of their time completing records which limits contact time with children and families. There is a lack of clarity about boundaries e.g. between the Common Assessment Framework process and referral, between referral and initial assessment.
Our findings demonstrated an extremely fragile management structure and the inevitable conclusion is that the current social work model is not fit for purpose.
• Findings from an external authoritative audit of the case files of all children in care demonstrated that standards varied across the city and that overall the quality of case files for looked after children was not adequate.
• Serious shortfalls in performance in the in-house residential services were highlighted by an external review of the service commissioned by the City Council.
The report highlighted the lack of clear long-term strategy setting out a vision and aspiration for the service, a lack of clarity about management functions, a lack of business processes to maintain homes and deal with staffing matters and a need to strengthen support services particularly Human Resources, IT and Finance.
Children’s social care is a crucial service and it is clear that the issues highlighted in the Inquiry findings are compromising our ability to deliver quality services at the frontline to our most vulnerable children and families. The current model of service delivery is patently not working. Urgent investment is needed to address immediate and short-term issues but we also need to ensure that any changes made now are embedded and sustained to ensure that standards are improved for the future. This needs to be the City Council’s top priority.
