Tag Archives: haringey council

Another failure by Labour Haringey

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Homes for Haringey (Haringey Council’s arms length management organisation for council houses) have just admitted to my Lib Dem colleague, Cllr Monica Whyte, that residents of Stokely Court (sheltered accommodation for the elderly and disabled) will have to wait yet another year before their homes will be redecorated – four years after the Council promised that they would be renovated and ten years since they were last redecorated.

Monica Whyte has written urgently to the Chief Executive of Homes for Haringey to explain why Stokely Court has been neglected and how many other sheltered accommodation homes have been missed due to the “slippage” of the Internal Decoration Programme for Elderly and Disabled Tenants.

Monica is on the rampage – quite rightly!

If anyone knows of any more instances where Haringey Council has failed to meet its promised obligations on redecoration, repair or renewal – please let me know.

Laming's inquiry reports

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Not (yet) had time to blog about Lord Laming’s report into the state of children’s services – so instead here’s a link to press coverage with my views:

Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, who represents Haringey in north London where the Climbie and Baby P deaths occurred, has repeated her calls for a full public inquiry into the Baby P case.

She said: “Clearly the rulebook doesn’t need to be rewritten, the rules just need to be applied. To do this, Haringey needs two things above all – more accountability and more openness.

“However, key questions remain unanswered, such as why did Haringey’s whistle-blowing policy fail so badly?

“Why were the people who warned that something was wrong ignored? We have had review after review and yet we seem no closer to the truth.” (epolitix.com)

What will Lord Laming have found?

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The Laming findings on how his recommendations following the Victoria Climbie tragedy have been implemented will be reported tomorrow.

I have had some qualms about Lord Laming looking at his own recommendations as I have been afraid he might not want to find fault. However, he takes the issue of child protection extremely seriously and is the wise old owl who realised that the leadership was key to changing the way a department works – hence the Children’s Act 2004 which made clear where individual responsibility should rest – and so ultimately was why Sharon Shoesmith and Liz Santry were in the frame.

From all the leaks, I expect that Laming will have looked pretty thoroughly at social workers’ caseloads and discovered that they are not kept to the 12 cases I believe he recommended. But I also hope that he has looked at the line management. We were all gobsmacked that Baby P could be visited so many times to no avail. Surely we must see the creation of a culture where if the social worker visiting is too scared or inexperienced etc to ask to see the child from top to bottom – it would be normal for her or him to go back and report this, be supported, and be accompanied back to satisfy themselves of the true condition of the child.

More tick boxes and process driven stuff is the last thing we need – so I’m glad that Laming looks to be staying clear of that. However, I am pretty sure that the atmosphere on the Safeguarding Children Board in Haringey was such that the members gave up putting forward their professional views – as my understanding is that they were simply over-ruled by management and bludgeoned ultimately into silent acquiescence. This needs to change – and so a key recommendation I will look for will be to have the Board discussions and particularly disagreements minuted. They are not currently.

Outside of the leadership and management within Children’s Services – I am fearful that the wider issues will not feature – and those wider issues if not examined now will cause us regret after some future tragedy.

So what about the joining together of education and children’s social services – has it worked? I tread carefully as they were joined to stop children falling through the gap – but clearly in Haringey the Director of Education found herself then in charge of an area where she had no experience. How significant was that? During the furore – Ms Shoesmith was supported by many Heads of Schools who praised her education record – but amongst the hundreds of people from social services who contacted me, not one praised her work on that side.

What about the issue of Haringey Labour Council not heeding any of the warnings that children were at risk? They had plenty – from me, from relatives, from whistleblowers and from opposition members. They ignored all of them. If something is wrong – how can the administration be made to listen? Secrecy, cover-ups and rank closing were the culture of Haringey Labour and officers. Gagging orders, injunctions, refusal to submit to scrutiny and so on meant that no light shone on what was going on. Moreover, even since the furore and the shaming of Haringey – Labour are still blocking moves to proper oversight.

Then there’s the inspection regime. Ofsted gave Haringey three stars just whilst all this was going on under the cover. How can we rely on an inspection system that failed so miserably? And what of the Government whose system of stars makes authorities jump through hoops to get funding and autonomy – putting the temptation in front of people to fiddle and distort the system?

And what of budgetary pressures – they are ever-present. It was said that in an email managers were told not to take children into care because there was no funding. What part did this play?

And finally – what of the nightmare going on in the health services? More of that later.

So you can see – whilst I am hopeful Lord Laming’s recommendations will address some of the issues – in my view we still need a public inquiry on these other issues to ensure that the whole debacle and failure that let Baby P be killed is properly and extensively addressed.

Haringey drops to be a one star council

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As I twittered yesterday, the latest outside review of Haringey Council has seen its overall rating drop to one star:

The Audit Commission has dramatically reduced the council’s star rating, the system by which council performance is judged.

The rating has been slashed from an “improving well” three stars last year, to a “not improving adequately” one star this year.

The report noted: “The council’s failure in its key priority to safeguard children has been publicly reported and it currently delivers an inadequate service for children and young people.

“There was insufficient strategic leadership and management oversight of the safeguarding of children and young people and a lack of rigorous arrangements for the management of performance.” [Haringey Independent]

Improving Haringey's care of children

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I went to the Haringey Strategic Partnership meeting last night particularly to have the opportunity to raise some of my ongoing concerns over the plans for child protection post Baby P. Peter Lewis, who took on the role after Sharon Shoesmith’s sacking, will present Haringey Council’s response / action plan to the hideously damning Joint Area Review report by OFSTED commissioned by Ed Balls.

The action plan is pages and pages of issues, identified leads and objectives and so on and so forth. As I said to the meeting – and the meeting is all the key players in Haringey, not just the council – I can’t judge the actions as the majority as they are about details which go beyond what I know of. However the three key issues I raised which as I said might be in the many pages but I couldn’t identify them were:

– firstly that much of what went wrong in Haringey was culture and attitude – and unless that changed all the proposed actions would not deliver a safer child protection regime

– secondly – that so very many people – including myself – warned Haringey that children were at risk and they took no notice. Were there measures that would ensure that warnings were heeded rather than rebutted and ignored?

– lastly, what measures were there that would ensure that professional advice and experience was not simply steamrollered into submission by management? Decisions made by the Safeguarding Children Board that led to Baby P’s death were by agreement – but my understanding is that concerns were raised, professional judgements and warning were given – but that the managerial lead simply intimidated or ignored those who raised concerns into submission.

The answers were not wholly satisfactory. On the first – yes promises that culture and attitude would be entirely different. Good – but haven’t seen the text that will go with the action plan to the Secretary of State today. On second one – the answer was about escalating the issues brought by staff to senior managerment. Given I went to the lead politician and the chief executive with my warnings and they ignored me – not convinced escalation is the safeguard we need. And on the third – well we will see!

The new broom in Haringey Children's Services

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This afternoon I had my first meeting with Peter Lewis – the new broom for Children’s Services brought in directly by the Secretary of State, Ed Balls, following the sacking of Sharon Shoesmith.

I am hopeful that someone with Peter’s extensive experience will make the changes necessary to give our children’s services the guidance, enthusiasm and improvements to make it within three years an examplar department. He certainly seemed completely committed to that aim .

Haringey has published its response to the urgent investigation by Ofsted commissioned by Ed Balls in the wake of the Baby P tragedy. It goes to Scrutiny Committee at Haringey shortly – and I will try and read it over the weekend.

Jacksons Lane latest

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Thank goodness – the Arts Council have been as good as their word and approved the grant to Jacksons Lane. They said it was dependent on Haringey Council showing commitment by increasing the core funding to Jacksons Lane. It was a narrow thing – as the money was only agreed by Haringey at the very last moment. But the really good news is that this time the grant is continuing for at least another two years which is brilliant news. Thank you Arts Council. And thank you to the hundreds of people who took time to write and email in support of Jacksons Lane – this made all the difference.

Autism

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Met a contingent from Haringey here to lobby MPs about the Private Members’ Bill on Friday 27th on autism. Have had loads of emails and letters as well asking me to be at the debate. So have cancelled everything to attend.

Just a word on process re Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) – they are always on a Friday when MPs have gone back to their constituencies to work there. Most MPs, for example, do surgery on Fridays (as do I). But these Bills need 100 MPs to pass on to next stage and so almost never get that kind of attendance. Just occasionally there will be a Bill whose intent is so compelling that MPs will stay. It may seem strange to those outside of Parliament who may very well be asking – what is the point of winning the ballot and getting a Bill if it has virtually zero chance of 100 MPs being there to vote for it (let alone the Government attending to defeat it)?

Well – it’s just another bit of Westminster lunacy really. I think PMBs should be in normal time and not on Fridays – after all all MPs are elected to raise issues in Parliament and democracy would be better served if more Private Bills had more backing.

But we are where we are. I am very glad that this important issue is to be debated. The people who lobbied me raised a number of issues but the one that really (in my view and theirs) needs attention is what do you do with your autistic child in terms of planning for their future. There is no provision locally or nationally when they finish at school and parents need and deserve a transition planning service – and then the facilities for autistic young adults to spend their days.

This must be such a worry for parents as no-one at Haringey Council really listens or takes this on board. We have a special school for autistic children in Haringey called the Treehouse Trust which is doing fantastic work and wants to become (in fact it is already) a centre for excellence and learning and training in the field. I wonder if they could be persuaded to pursue the ‘what happens after’ path – as not knowing and not being able to get any sort of real transition and facilities is untenable. Seems the Government and Haringey Council just think it is OK for these young people to have no proper future, housing or care.

So – be very interested to hear the Government response to the debate and if I get a chance – will intervene on these specific provision points.

Sharon Shoesmith in The Guardian

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Sharon Shoesmith pleads her side of the story in today’s Guardian. Her account sheds adds very little to what has already been aired in public – so rather than go over the ground I’ve blogged about at some length previously I’ll just make three brief points this time:

1. It’s a journalistic scoop for The Guardian – so I’ve no complaints over the front page lead and three full inside pages they’ve given it. But what a contrast with the way that so many people who had concerns about how Haringey services were being run under Sharon Shoesmith were side-lined, ignore or had legal injunctions banning them from speaking out. That’s one reason why we need a public inquiry – so that we can hear (and learn from) all those other stories too.

2. One point Sharon Shoesmith tries to argue in the article is one I have heard before in relation to this case – that all of this episode puts off social workers from coming to Haringey or indeed people going into the profession at all. That misses the point of the real problem – well-run services and departments attract staff. Failing to deal with concerns – as was Haringey’s way – is what lies at the root of the problems. Run services well and respond properly when concerns are raised – that’s the answer – not wishing the public and media don’t notice problems.

3. It’s a shame the coverage doesn’t address not only the question about how Haringey did (or rather didn’t) respond to concerns raised repeatedly with it over the running of Children’s Services – but also didn’t address the question of the way all the senior staff and councillors closed ranks after the death of Victoria Climbie, with only the most junior person in the food chain being disciplined. Complaints about interventions by Ed Balls or the media need to face up to that reality – last time, those other people responsible for blunders got away with it because there wasn’t this pressure. Would letting more senior people duck responsibility and blame everything on the most junior person they could find really have been the right outcome yet again?