Birmingham child services director failed to get damning Ofsted report toned down
Birmingham Children’s director Tony Howell attempted to have a damning Ofsted exposé of the city’s continuing failure to help children at risk of sexual and physical abuse watered down, it has emerged.
Mr Howell wrote to the watchdog after Ofsted sent the city council a draft copy of its report and asked for comments.
He took issue with the central finding that safeguarding measures by social services remain inadequate and have been for two years. But his efforts to have the more critical aspects of the report toned down were not successful.
His plea was rejected by Ofsted, which said it could not accept Mr Howell’s version of events.
The report was released this week, a fortnight after it was announced that Mr Howell, the city council’s Strategic Director for Children, Young People and Families, would be taking early retirement. He plans to leave in January, when he will be 60.
Ofsted’s findings prompted the politician responsible for turning around children’s social services to warn the council to “move out of denial”.
Tory city councillor Len Clark, who earlier this year published a damning scrutiny committee indictment of systemic failure at the heart of social care in Birmingham, said his colleagues had to recognise that throwing more money at the problem was not the answer.
Noting that the city’s controlling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has invested more than £100 million extra in children’s social services since 2005, Coun Clark said additional cash would not confront management weaknesses nor bring about different ways of working essential to cope with an ever-growing number of cases involving alleged child abuse.
The Ofsted report, based on a two-week inspection last month, found “significant weaknesses” in child protection arrangements.
Coun Clark (Con Quinton) said: “Was I surprised at their conclusion? No, I was not. It’s a dire report.”
Although Coun Clark accepted that Mr Howell had taken issue with the report, he warned: “The council must come out of denial, we have to acknowledge that the Ofsted report is fair in its conclusions.”
Ofsted’s findings were almost identical to those in his own Who Cares? report, which found that children’s social services were unfit for purpose, Coun Clark noted.
In a blistering condemnation, Ofsted awarded services for safeguarding children the lowest possible Ofsted ranking – not meeting minimum requirements.
The findings are a bitter blow to city children’s social services, which has been working under a government improvement order for 16 months.
