By Sheila Mckenzie-
Southampton Children’s Services are working hard to address a culture of fear that saw the council exposed and slammed for wide levels of inadequacies among its staff, after a whistleblowing campaign exposed its serious failings.
Dangerous decision making on the part of social workers who failed to follow advice left several vulnerable children open to both abuse and neglect. Southampton children’s services were exposed in the report for using unqualified to staff , ignoring professional advice, and acting against known policies designed to protect the interest of children in care.
The former director of children’s services, Hilary Brookes, offered her resignation as a result of the report, and a new DCS, Rob Henderson, currently at Croydon, is due to take up post next month. This is the second time in the past 5 years the council’s director of children’s services has had to resign.
Alison Elliott mysteriously resigned in 2015, dumping her £160,000 a year role after just over two years in the position.
The council’s latest accounts show she received a salary of £143,308, expense allowances of £430 and pension contributions of £17,685 – a total of £161,473 – in 2014/15.
The new director in waiting, Mr. Henderson, said this provided an “excellent opportunity” to make the changes recommended. The authority has produced an plan for implementing the recommendations.
They include objectives to establish a practitioners’ improvement board to provide a frontline sense check on the effectiveness of the children’s services improvement plan, by the end of next month.
Rob Henderson will shoulder challenge of presiding of Southampton’s troubled Children’s Services Image: paul.martyniuk
Insiders from the Council told The Eye Of Media.Com that they are working hard to build on the recommendations from a damning report against its failing children’s services. It includes creating a compelling vision for the service, an inclusive culture between senior managers and employees, and investment in the team to deliver the best for the children of the city.
Plans for implementing recommendations to address the embarrassing failings include objectives to establish a practitioners’ improvement board to provide a frontline sense check on the effectiveness of the children’s services improvement plan, by the end of next month. A member of this group will sit on the children’s services improvement board, supervising the plan.
Reducing Front Line Case Loads
They will also commit to reducing frontline caseloads and be explicit about caseload numbers for each service and when this is expected to be achieved, with such reduction completed by 31 March 2021.
The shamed council also plans to introduce a compelling workforce strategy to attract the most capable employees, and establish regular independent assessment of the effectiveness of children’s social care services.
Review supervision arrangements are also to ensure “high quality, supportive, challenging and monitored”, by 31 March 2021.
Commission a quarterly independent assessment of the quality of practice, by the end of November 2020.
Whistle Blowing
The whistleblowing revealed that senior managers unilaterally overrode practice decisions taken in children’s best interests and failed to follow policies in relation to the appointment of consultants.
Southampton Council commissioned the investigation following whistleblowing complaints from staff working in the service, raised in January of this year by managers and colleagues within the service. They were submitted as a collective grievance by the Council’s local Unite branch secretary.
The report by Malcolm Newsam, an experienced children’s troubleshooter and former director upheld most of the complaints brought earlier this year by 31 whistle blowers – mostly children’s services managers about the leadership of the service and the safety of children.
Only last year, an internal appreciative inquiry report found “an expressed fear of speaking out” in a “chaotic” working environment where the style, tone and timeliness of leaders’ communication to staff created “resentment, confusion and anxiety”.
The culture of fear continued after the 2019 report, which should have formed the basis of a more collaborative approach between senior management and staff, but this opportunity wasn’t taken.
Although the full report into the whistle blowers’ complaints, brought through a collective grievance by the Unite union was kept confidential, the council this week published a learning report drawn up by Newsam summarising his findings.
Ignored Advice
The report also revealed that senior managers ‘ignored advice’ on children’s safety and used a number of incompetent professionals to try and achieve outcomes normally attained by experienced social workers.
The whistle blowers alleged that the service was “failing to keep children safe due to poor and dangerous decision making” and Newsam upheld their complaint in 13 of the 21 cases he examined in detail.
It further identified examples of senior managers “unilaterally over-riding the collective planning arrangements that are in place to ensure that decisions are taken in the best interests of the child”.
Newsam, said: “In many of these instances the decision-makers ignored the best advice of multi-agency meetings designed to ensure that children are kept safe, and in this regard, they potentially placed a significant amount of risk upon themselves and the council.”
He also found that the priority the senior leadership placed on keeping children with their parents meant children’s needs were lost sight of as “wrap around” alternatives to care were either not available or unsuitable.
“There is significant evidence that the removal of the peripatetic teams towards the end of the year, did lead to significant numbers of cases being unallocated and/ or the transferring of cases. These were some of the most vulnerable children on caseload and this change did present risks to the service.”
It was driven by a service struggling to meet high demand, in which caseloads were “unrealistically high”, a situation exacerbated by the “regular transferring of cases caused by the departure and arrival of successive agency social workers”.
Departure From Policies
The inspector also found that senior managers did not follow the council’s policies on the appointment of consultants and “therefore, the normal safeguards to protect the council from any allegations of preferential treatment or the misuse of public money had not been adhered to”.
He also referred to a council’s internal report which found “an expressed fear of speaking out”, “a strong sense of a top down imposition” and a “chaotic” working environment.
Opposition councillor James Baillie said: “This is a damning report which lays bare significant failings. There are questions that need to be answered as to why decisions were taken against the interests of the children involved. I would fully expect the Cabinet Member to take responsibility for the failings in his department. The council needs to take on board all the findings of the report and fully implement the recommendations
Absence Of Challenge
The report revealed that Social work supervision offered ‘no challenge or direction’ in case of suspected child sexual abuse.
Newsam said that the replacement of these teams by “hub” teams was “ill-thought out and poorly communicated”, with no business case made and the hub teams set up without agreed operating procedures and with less qualified staff – who were also from an agency – than those they replaced.
Unqualified Staff
“The introduction of newly qualified and unqualified staff to undertake work usually undertaken by qualified experienced staff was not something that could be done without a careful risk analysis. Similarly, sourcing these staff from an agency provider was ill-advised and could only lead to an additional cost pressures and a greater reliance on temporary staff.”
This was not the first or only such change, with Newsam adding: “It has been made apparent that the regular changes in service size and structure has been a major destabilising characteristic within the service and will have contributed to the sense of chaos many staff have referred to.”
He also found clear evidence that senior managers’ use of consultants did not follow council policy and procedure and lacked scrutiny, such that safeguards to protect the authority against allegations of preferential treatment, or misuse of public money had not been adhered to.
Apology
Responding to the report, chief executive Sandy Hopkins said: “I want to apologise unreservedly on behalf of Southampton City Council to our colleagues and to the residents of the city for the failings highlighted in the report.
We are committed to getting this right and must work together to achieve this. This report does not in any way detract from the commitment and dedication of our children’s services colleagues who I know work hard every day on the front line to protect and improve outcomes for children and young people in Southampton.”
Chief Executive: Sandy Hopkins Image: twitter
The council has shared the report with Social Work England and Ofsted. Unite has also referred two former senior managers – who were the subject of the whistleblowers’ complaints and are no longer with the council – to Social Work England for possible fitness to practise action.
The branch secretary for Unite’s Southampton branch, Hayley Garner, said: “Unite the union and the whistle-blowers within children’s services welcome the findings of the independent investigation. We are satisfied that the serious concerns we raised that put children at risk were upheld by the investigating officer and that work has started on making permanent changes within the service to support staff and provide better outcomes for children.
“We always believed that a fair and robust investigation would uphold our complaints due to the substantial amount of supporting evidence provided. Unite will be making sure that Southampton City council implement the recommendations on the Action plan which includes encouraging a culture of open communication within the service.”
A spokesperson for Southampton Council told The Eye Of Media.Com: ”We are working with colleagues to make the changes that will address these recommendations. We know there is a lot of work to be done but we are confident that working together across our organisation rapid progress will be made. We acknowledge that similar concerns have been raised before and were not solved. This time it will be different, but we need to rebuild some key issues such as trust and openness first”
P.S: This article was written by both authours