Cllr Mike Prednergast speech to Council last night regarding Childrens Services

Around 12 months ago I stood here following  a damning review from OFSTED regarding Children’s Social Services, that report was in May 2021.

Then, we were told there would be more money made available, more social workers hired and we would see improvements. Those who criticised the current leadership were deemed to be lowering the morale of staff and unhelpful.

There was a plan, an Improvement Plan that would bring about the change that was urgently needed.

The Improvement Board was set up, meeting regularly but without publishing minutes and with no members of the relevant scrutiny committee ever invited or even really aware what was being discussed. 

Only recently has a member of the committee been appointed, naturally a Labour member, as we all know that the best scrutiny is provided by members of the ruling party. It’s always best to mark your own homework.

The ironically named Improvement Board with the equally ironic Improvement Plan, would (ironically) improve things and any criticism would be unhelpful and counter productive. 

Fast forward 12 months and after an exhaustive 3 week inspection by OFSTED,  our children’s social services were given the lowest possible rating of inadequate in every area and we are still failing the most vulnerable in Sefton.

I know some of you will be as astonished as I was to find that after 12 months of Improvement Boards, Improvement Plans and promises of improvements, we had no actual meaningful improvement. 

Things have gotten so bad, that central government have sent in a commissioner to review to review the department to see if it is even capable of improving.

Since 2016/17, we have spent £219 million on children’s social services in Sefton. 

The budget has increased from £28 million in 2016/17 to £47.9 million in 2021/22, an increase of 71% in a 6 year period. 

An average increase of 11.83% per year, even now that is an inflation busting increase.

Throwing ever increasing sums of money at this problem has clearly not worked. Sefton finds itself amongst the lowest ranked local authorities. Yet there seems to be an unwillingness to acknowledge what has happened.

At the last Council meeting, we had the Labour members filibuster to avoid one question on the topic. Incredibly, at the last Overview and Scrutiny meeting, the OFSTED report wasn’t even on the formal agenda.

A few weeks ago we did have an unminuted informal briefing on the recent report. 

I thought I had entered the twilight zone.

We were talking about the positives in the report, the good things that were said by OFSTED. 

Sort of like putting a positive spin on the sinking of the Titanic, yes it sank but some of the lifeboats did work.

There still seems to be a bunker mentality and that any criticism must be rebutted, we must put a positive spin on things and we refuse to accept the stark reality that is staring us in the face.

The reality that this council for many, many years has failed vulnerable children and will likely continue to do so for the immediate future. 

Things may well get worse before they get better.

How long will we as a public body accept this?

How many hundreds of millions of pounds of public money will be spent on inadequacy?

How many more children will be let down and left in high risk situations? 

There has been an abject failure on leadership by this council both at the executive level and the political level, this was identified by OFSTED. 

Yet not one person has lost their job, not one resignation from the political leadership not one apology from any of those in charge, sorry seems to be the hardest word.

So what are we to do? What steps can we take to improve things quickly?

I have no doubt that those seeking to improve the department genuinely wish to do so and are working hard to try and achieve this.

That is not enough though, children only get one childhood and too many childhoods in Sefton are being blighted by this council’s failure, by this administrations inability to recognise that it lacks the capacity and capability to turn things around.

We need real leadership and a wholesale change in the management culture that involves recognising the problems, putting forward a plan to address them and putting this plan into action.

The political and executive leadership of the department need to ask themselves can they really do this, if not, they should ask central government to take over the running of the department as our children cannot afford years more inadequacy.

I urge members of all parties to support this motion as it is written, we need to send a clear message that failure will not be tolerated any more