Council watchdog calls for more children’s social care staff

A council watchdog is calling for more children’s social care staff to be included in Leeds City Council’s spending proposals for 2010.

The Scrutiny Board for Children’s Services has made the call in an interim report of a year-long investigation into safeguarding services for children in Leeds. The full report will be published later in the year.

The board agreed to publish the interim report so it could make clear recommendations on children’s social care staffing resources before the council’s budget decisions are finalised in February for 2010/11.

Councillor Bill Hyde, chair of the Scrutiny Board (Children’s Services), said:
“We felt that children’s social care staffing was such an important issue that it was crucial we were in a position to guide and influence the council’s spending decisions in this area as early as possible.

“While we have been encouraged by some of the new children’s social care recruitment initiatives in Leeds, large numbers of staff still have extremely high case loads to deal with and this has been added to by the recent increase in referrals following the publicity surrounding cases such as baby P.

“We will be producing a final report and making further recommendations in the near future. Our final report will cover the full range of areas that we have examined during our inquiry, which has included 17 visits and meetings so far. However we felt that it was urgent that we make this recommendation before the budget is set for next year.”

The board is making the following recommendations:

• That Leeds City Council’s executive board includes an increased resource for children’s social care staffing in the budget proposals to be put forward to council in February 2010.

• That the costings for an assessment caseload of 20 cases are used as a minimum starting point for working towards a children’s social work service with sufficient staff to ensure a reasonable caseload.

Copies of the interim report, entitled, Scrutiny Inquiry report Safeguarding – Interim Report are available from the Scrutiny Support Unit: scrutiny.unit@leeds.gov.uk.

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Notes to editors:

1. In January 2009 the Leader of Leeds City Council asked the Scrutiny Board for Children’s Services to undertake an inquiry into safeguarding arrangements for children in Leeds.

2. The board agreed to focus on two key areas: whether the council had adequate children’s social work resources to meet core child protection responsibilities and whether it’s safeguarding duty and preventative work was effective, particularly at a wedge level.

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For media enquiries please contact:
Sara Hyman, Leeds City Council press office tel: (0113) 224 3602
Email sara.hyman@leeds.gov.uk