Children's social services in Birmingham damned in new report

Oct 6 2009 by Paul Dale, Birmingham Post

The author of a damning report into “systematic failure” by Birmingham children’s social services today challenges city council leaders to provide new investment to turn the troubled department around.

Tory councillor Len Clark, whose all-party scrutiny investigation exposed a catalogue of poor practice by social workers and incompetent management, called for a culture change and a fresh approach by politicians.

The result of the six-month inquiry, published yesterday, found “long term malpractice that contributed to a significant malfunctioning” within the service.

More than half of case files on 1,200 children at risk contained “unacceptably poor practice”, social workers regularly failed to attend case reviews and had limited contact with the children they were supposed to be looking after, and there was no long term strategy setting out a vision for children’s homes.

A 50-point recovery plan drawn up by the council as recently as 2007 was found to contain unrealistic timetables, a lack of priorities and paid no attention to the council’s capacity to change.

Vacancy levels in children’s services are running at 24 per cent, while a fifth of social workers are likely to be off sick at any given time, the inquiry found.

The council spends £30 million a year on hiring expensive agency workers to replace absent staff – placing even more pressure on limited budgets.