Tyndale: What DO you have to do to get sacked at Birmingham City Council?

Oct 11 2009

SO just how bad at your job do you need to be before you get the sack at Birmingham City Council?

Well, pretty much anything goes. If a child in your care is killed, don’t worry. These things happen.

The full extent of the council’s bungling social services department was laid bare last week with the publication of a report that shames our city – and should, but doesn’t appear to, shame its bosses.

An all-party scrutiny investigation led by Tory councillor Len Clark exposed a litany of failures from the top to the bottom of this organisation, riddled with a sicknote culture and a “can’t do” attitude.

We used to accuse shoddy companies and groups of operating “Spanish practices”.

In future, incompetent councils should be damned for using “Brummie practices” in honour of the plods, pen-pushers and skivers who have brought disrepute on child care services in this city.

Clark’s six-month probe into the murky world of Birmingham social services revealed that “long-term malpractice” had led to “significant malfunctioning” within the service.

This is a polite way of saying the department was led by muppets. If you are led by muppets, and you treat people like muppets, you get a service delivered at the grassroots by muppets.

Here are just some of the bleak findings of the Clark inquiry:

More than half of the case files on 1,200 kids at risk of abuse contained “unacceptably poor practice”; social workers couldn’t be bothered to turn up for case reviews; so-called professionals had little contact with the children they were suppose to be protecting from harm.

There was no proper plan for sorting out children’s homes; a quarter of job vacancies in children’s services were unfilled, and a fifth of social workers were off sick. Oh, and yes, the council spends £30 million a year hiring agency staff to cover those employees who can’t be bothered to get out of bed.

It’s hard to think of a more damning indictment of local government failure. This is despite the fact that social services has been flooded with £100 million of extra cash to get its house in order, although in fairness it’s more of a pig sty than a house.

Then there is a further inconvenient truth – the needless death of 19 children since 2004/05.

On average, three children known to social workers in Birmingham die each year. Five died in 2005/06.

The victims have included seven year-old Toni-Ann Byfield, who was executed by a drug dealer. Social workers thought it was a good idea for little Toni-Ann to stay at a grubby ex-offenders’ hostel with the man she thought was her dad.

He wasn’t. He was a crack dealer. A rival dealer burst in and shot Toni-Ann in the back.

At the time of that scandal, a council chief said: “We’ve made really significant changes to address all the recommendations of an independent review.”

Three children died the following year.

Seeing as no-one has bothered in the past, who’s going to do the honourable thing and walk the plank this time?

Certainly not Tony Howell, the council’s well-paid strategic director for children, young people and families.

Children’s services came under his control in 2007 and he’s not really to blame, you see. He’s only the man in charge of this monstrous mess.

Neither does it seem likely that anyone else will stick up their hand and admit they got it horribly wrong.

Of course, one would hope slack social workers responsible for child deaths and other misdemeanours get their comeuppance, but the hope is forlorn.

It is inescapable that Birmingham’s social services is a weeping sore and no-one can be bothered to do anything about it.

But now isn’t the time for more dilly-dallying. How many more children do we have to see die?

The department was put under special measures by the Government in February and told to work to an improvement plan. This decision was fatally misguided.

The council was given the opportunity to draw up a 50-point recovery plan in 2007. It was hopeless and was quietly dropped.

Putting social services on special measures was like giving the authority a second yellow card – and allowing it to stay on the pitch.

The Government should intervene, and show the red now. The bunch running social services in Birmingham should be shown the door, and shown it robustly.