Council plans £4 million to hire 30 staff

Devon's children's services currently inadequate

Councillors are being asked to invest nearly £4m to hire 30 full time staff members to address serious failings that led to Devon County Council’s Children’s Services being rated inadequate.

The money is spread over two financial years, but in the unlikely event that everyone was hired on day one, that's an average of £63,333 per role, including employment costs including national insurance and pension contributions. It's unclear whether any cash goes towards projects rather than staff.

Following concerns going back seven years, Ofsted inspectors criticised senior leaders for failing to protect vulnerable youngsters and not knowing the extent of problems in its service.

An inspection in January identified a small number of vulnerable young people were not supported to become independent after they left care.

Inspectors said Devon's children’s social care services are inadequate having identified ‘serious failures’, with a very small minority of care leavers left living in unacceptable accommodation, and senior leaders weren't aware of it.

They also identified children who had suffered chronic neglect and emotional abuse are being left with families for too long.

Devon County Council’s cabinet, which meets online next Wednesday, ia being asked to approve £2.2m in 20/21 and £1.6m in 21/22 for 30 full time equivalent staff to get the service back on track.

Eight areas need improvement:

• Services to care leavers, including: − sufficiency of accommodation and support available for young people − assessment of risk and safety planning for young people − access for young people to full information about their health histories
• The quality of social work practice to assess, support and protect children who experience neglect and the effective use of pre-proceedings
• The effectiveness of child protection conference chairs in responding to escalating risks and identifying when progress is not being made for children.
• The consideration of child protection medicals when children disclose physical abuse or present with injuries.
• Permanence planning for children.
• The quality and timeliness of life story work.
• The assessment of children looked after placed with parents.
• Strategic oversight and grip on areas for improvement and oversight of senior leaders, including case audits and supervision
•  

In a report, Darryl Freeman, head of children’s services, says: “There are no quick fixes but what has changed is the seniority of management oversight and the explicit expectation on senior managers to take action to resolve young people’s circumstances."

His report says that additional resources to support the improvement plan require increased capacity for data quality, information and assurance teams, increased capacity for corporate parenting and participation teams and increased senior leadership capacity to drive improvement.

Ofsted are also temporarily putting in three inspectors, at no cost to the county council.

The budget requirement is estimated to be £3.8m for the next two years to carry out the work, an increase of 30 full time equivalent staff – 21.2 of whom will be permanent, and 8.8 on fixed term appointment. However, the covid-19 pandemic is likely to delay the recruitment to some posts. The cost would have been higher otherwise. Mr Freeman added:“In recognition of this [covid-19], the proposal has been reviewed and permanent costs reduced, but despite that, this proposal still represents a considerable investment in times of great uncertainty.”