Some social workers ‘not up to the job’, say managers, after critical Ofsted report
action that we need to take with those workers.”
Ms Daly said support had to be given to workers who were unable to do their jobs because of ‘other impacting factors’ and that it was important to understand the difference between the two.
She added: “We have already started to work closely with colleagues in HR to take assertive action where required with those social workers within who are not performing safely with our children.”
In its report, Ofsted described most social work practice in West Sussex as ‘weak’, adding: “Continual turnover in the workforce and high caseloads severely limit the local authority’s ability to achieve a consistently acceptable standard of social work practice.”
It was a point by Caroline Fife, regional organiser.
She said: “Social workers are facing huge demands with ever increasing caseloads and raised Unison more complex needs.”
She added that the union had not been told that there was any need for action to be taken against any staff.
There was a Unison representative present at the meeting when Ofsted’s report was discussed.
Ms Fife said: “The council’s top managers spent close to zero time in the select committee fronting up for the failures of strategic leadership which Ofsted laid out so clearly.
“Yet they have accused staff of not being able to do the job before they have even properly examined all the factors that makes social work so difficult in the current funding climate and specifically at West Sussex.
“It smacks of a desire to pass the blame down the chain of command.”
Councillors charged with scrutinising children’s services in West Sussex have questioned the level of information provided to them.
The service was rated inadequate by Ofsted and the council will now work with a commissioner from the Department for Education in an effort to bring things up to scratch.
The council’s progress will be closely monitored and it could lose control of its children’s services if the Government is not happy with its improvement plans.
Scrutiny came in for criticism from the inspectors, who described the process as not ‘sufficiently rigorous’.
But at a meeting of the children and young people’s services select committee, Sujan Wickremaratchi (Con, Haywards Heath Town) said members could only ‘go by what we’re shown’.
Mr Wickremaratchi said: “Over the last few years I’ve been in this committee we’ve been shown all these fancy graphs, charts, and we believe that everything is fine when obviously it’s not.
“That is the grave concern I have. How are we going forward with robust scrutiny of these charts being shown to us when we assume services are fine?”
Leader Louise Goldsmith recognised that it was easy to ‘drown’ in data and added: “We want to hear the warts because we won’t sort them out until we hear about them. We only hear the nice things.”
Members were determined to see children services improve and made a number of suggestions.
John Readman, the new director of children & family services, is only in the post on an interim basis, having replaced a previous interim director.
He is the services’ third director since January.
Mr Readman told the committee it would take money, nerve and time to sort out the problems raised by Ofsted.
Sharing his similar experience of improving services at Lancashire County Council, he said: “You take a whole system and a whole council approach so that everybody has got that kind of commitment to supporting children’s services.
“Youbackitwithinvestment – I’m afraid it does cost to come out of intervention.
“You recognise that going to take some time.”
The committee was told that seven core themes for improvement had been decided – effective leadership, work force, planning & development, learning & development, design of the service, and partnerships, process and compliance. it’s