‘Lessons have been learned’
CHILDREN’S services in Kirklees were described in an Ofsted report last year as “not improving quick enough”, and Steve Walker from Leeds City Council was drafted in as director.
Responding to claims by PACE, Mr Walker stated that ‘lessons had been learned’ and that Kirklees would be working with the charity, adding that council leader Shabir Pandor would be writing to the Home Secretary calling for a national review into what social services could learn from the abuse.
The council have also enlisted the help of an expert into children’s safeguarding, who will carry out an independent review of how its social services handled the cases.
Mr Walker said: “The recent trials into historical child sexual exploitation have highlighted issues in the way that children and young people were safeguarded at that time.
“For that reason Dr Mark Peel the former Professor of Social Work at Leicester University, has been commissioned, through the Kirklees Safeguarding Children’s Board, to undertake a review of these nonrecent cases to identify whether there are any lessons we can learn.
“The safety of our children and young people is our highest priority and we are always seeking to improve our response. Therefore, to ensure that practice in Kirklees and our response to Child Sexual Exploitation reflects best practice nationally, we have commissioned an independent review of our current policies and practices by external experts to identify whether there are opportunities to improve these further.
“Child Sexual Exploitation can have a devastating effect on young people and their families touched by it. I am pleased, therefore, that we have employed a worker from PACE who will work with us to ensure that families have the right support.”
“It is now clear following the cases in Rochdale, Rotherham, Newcastle and now Kirklees the risk that children and young people face from CSE is a national issue. For this reason the Leader of the Council is writing to the Home Secretary, following the debate at full council last week, to outline our plans, and call for a national review of the learning.” The Examiner contacted several current and former councillors who were in senior positions at Kirklees at the time of the abuse. Clr Kath Pinnock, who was council leader from 2000-2006, said: “I can hand on heart say nobody raised the issue and I’m confident that if they had, we would have reacted in a way to bring these people to justice.” Clr Pinnock, now Baroness Pinnock, was involved in the setting up of Kirklees’ CSE Committee in 2010 in light of the grooming scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale, but said this never found any abuse on the scale of that investigated in Operation Tendersea.
She added: “We rely as councillors for some of this information to come from social services within Kirklees.
“We have got to do, as a council, everything we can to protect vulnerable children and that must be our priority.”
Retiring councillor Robert Light, council leader between 2006 and 2009, and former councillor Mehboob Khan, leader from 2009 to 2014, both declined to comment while investigations remain ongoing.