Inquiry demand over child services rating

on the council.

Eleanor Brazil, an experienced troubleshooter who turned round Hackney Council following the Baby P scandal, this week began a threemonth stint in Huddersfield to see if she can do the same for Kirklees.

If she decides it is unachievable the DfE can outsource children’s social services to a trust.

In 2011, the last Ofsted review, Kirklees was rated as “Good”.

The sudden decline has caused many to question what has caused the performance to drop.

Kirklees Tory group leader Clr David Hall urged Clr Erin Hill, Cabinet member for family support and child protection, to find out what went wrong and if any particular person was at fault.

He said: “We can’t learn lessons from the past if there’s not adequate investigation of the past.

“What efforts are being made to look into the political leadership in children’ services between 2011 and 2015?”

Former Tory leader Clr Robert Light said he had a “great deal of confidence” that Clr Hill had a good chance of recovering the situation. But he too called for answers about the past.

He said: “If any council gets an Ofsted like this, which to be frank is pretty damning, you would expect the portfolio holder to get a right good kicking.

“The issue is how did we get into this situation?

“There were mistakes made or we wouldn’t have got into this position. Where was the political leadership?”

But Clr Hill repeated her reluctance to point the finger. She said Ofsted’s standards had changed since 2011 and she was reluctant to use it as a comparison.

Council leader Clr David Sheard said he and Clr Hill had now met the commissioner.

“We welcome her help in getting the best for children,” he said. “We’re not objecting to her imposition at all.”

He added: “Everyone will ask how we got where we are, but the priority now is to put things right now.”

Clr Jean Calvert, who was portfolio holder in 2014/15, told councillors she’d had little direct experience of social services but had been keen to improve things and had attempted to boost funding for social care.

Prior to 2014 the portfolio was jointly held by Clr Cath Harris, who stood down from the council in 2015 for health reasons and Clr Peter O’Neill, who died unexpectedly while on holiday in Vietnam last December.

The council’s director of children’s services during the period of decline, Alison O’Sullivan, retired shortly before news of the crisis broke.

In her final year of employment with the council, Mrs O’Sullivan was the second highest paid official earning £137,113.