Baby P: Ed Balls Statement In Full And Sun’s Failed Campaign
Furthermore, in the particular case of Baby P, Ofsted has judged the Serious Case Review into his death to be inadequate.
Having studied the nine individual agency management reports on which the Serious Case Review is based, the inspectors judged:
- only three to be good;
- one to be adequate;
- and five to be inadequate – with the reports from Haringey children’s social care services and the Haringey Teaching Primary Care Trust judged to “lack rigour in their analysis and thus significantly undermine the integrity of the serious case review.”
And they conclude that:
“As a result, the serious case review misses important opportunities to ensure lessons are learned.”
Overall, the Inspectors’ findings are – I have to say – devastating.
Their report sets out detailed recommendations, all of which must now be accepted in full. And having studied their report, I have decided to take immediate action.
My first priority is to put in place a new leadership and management team in Haringey children’s services to ensure that vulnerable children in the borough are properly protected.
I have directed Haringey Council to appoint John Coughlan as Director of Children’s Services. Haringey Council will now remove the current Director of Children’s Services from her post with immediate effect.
Mr Coughlan is one of the most highly respected Directors of Children’s Services in the country – and I am grateful that he has agreed to extend his secondment to Haringey to manage the transition to new management.
My direction takes place under section 497A (4B) of the Education Act 1996. It takes immediate effect and will last until 31 December 2008. I will identify a new Director of Children’s Services to take up post from 1 January 2009 – and it is my intention to direct this appointment too.
As a result of my direction, Mr Coughlan will now be in charge of making all appointments in Haringey children’s services. He has decided that Libby Blake should be appointed as his deputy
So I am also directing her appointment. Ms Blake is currently seconded to Haringey from Kensington and Chelsea where she is Director for Family Services. I have asked Mr Coughlan to consider and address any immediate staffing issues raised by the Baby P case.
Mr Coughlan will consider further staffing capability in Haringey children’s services in the coming days. I am sure that he will have the full support of all Haringey staff as he prepares to implement the recommendations of the Inspectors’ report. I have asked Mr Coughlan and his successor to provide me with monthly reports.
I have also asked Ofsted to review the progress made on the implementation of the Inspectors’ recommendations and report to me by the end of June. On the basis of these regular reports and the report from Ofsted, I will then decide whether further sanction is needed – and in particular whether I should use my statutory powers to require the Council to enter into a contractual arrangement with an external provider for the delivery of some or all of its’ children’s services.
And in the mean time, if I am not satisfied that there is sufficient progress, I will not hesitate to intervene again.
But I believe that I need to go further now to ensure that all the Inspectors’ findings are acted upon across all local agencies and that all the lessons of the Baby P case are learned and acted upon.
It is unacceptable that the Serious Case Review into the death of Baby P was found inadequate. So I am also today directing Haringey Council, under Section 7A of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, to appoint a new and independent Chair of its Local Safeguarding Children Board.
Mr Graham Badman, who last week retired as Director of Children’s Services in Kent, has agreed to take up this post. He will start work this week. I have asked him immediately to begin a new Serious Case Review into the death of Baby P. He will submit the new Serious Case Review to Ofsted by the end of February for evaluation. And he will publish the executive summary of the new Serious Case Review – which must provide a full and comprehensive and fair summary of the full Serious Case Review – by the end of March.
This new Serious Case Review will require the commissioning of new management reports from – and the co-operation of – all agencies involved in child protection in Haringey. And all agencies must also now implement the wider recommendations made in the Inspectors’ report.
The Health Secretary is therefore announcing this afternoon that the Healthcare Commission will undertake an analysis of whether national child protection standards are being applied as vigorously as they should be, while the Chief Executive of the NHS will also ask all NHS organisations to review their child protection arrangements.
Posted: 1st, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Politicians Comments (13) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
December 8th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Is everyone missing the point of who is to blame for Baby P’s death - the parent ***edit***! The social workers, doctors and police did not kill this child. Yes they were negligent in their enquiries and perhaps more training is needed but to have them sacked for an error, i don’t wish to underestimate the severity of losing a human life. Why are the professionals being blamed. There is a huge shortage of social workers who are overworked and stressed. The salary isn’t particularly brilliant to cope with the stresses they take on, yet we wish to sack them so that the parents never do this again??? Can we ensure that the parents are named and shamed and dealt with accordingly. Money needs to be put into educating and training more social workers to cope with the demands of our evil society. There will be more deaths as there are more and more sick adults who feel that its ok to kill their children and yet they don’t seem to be held responsible. Who really should be educated here? The parent - do we now blame education for letting them down? Where does it stop? Why blame, can we not just do something positive about it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
The Baby P episode, as horrible as it is, is just one more error in a catalogue of disasters under this inept Government.
Sharon Shoesmith has rightly been suspended, also could there be a case for her to be prosecuted? Especially when one dwells on the nightmare and horrors that Baby P had to go through, due, no doubt, to the failures of Jaqui Smith and her cronies to spot what was going on.
We can only hope that that Gordon Brown, who incidentally, should go back to Scotland where he belongs, takes some drastic action and perhaps redeem some of the Labour Party’s atrocious record, although I and thousands of others doubt this very much. One would also hope the salaries of those guilty persons should go to children’s charities where it could go a long way to perhaps alleviating more suffering.
CJ
December 1st, 2008 at 8:06 pm
There was one whistle blower , and she got shouted down
December 1st, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Well if nothing else it’s given us another question; we are all used to ‘who watches the watchers?’ but what we need to know is ‘who reviews the reviewers?’.
I would perfectly happily see the editorial staff of the Sun tossed off the top of Canary Wharf, but the Serious Case Review carried out by Haringey was abysmally flawed.
If Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary hadn’t been called in, we would still be being told that it was all very sad but there was nothing which could have been done about it.
That clearly wasn’t true; safguarding in Haringey, and possibly a lot of other places as well, ‘needs urgent and sustained attention.’
It won’t get urgent and sustained attention if no-one knows it needs it.
However tainted the motives of the Sun, it can reasonably claim that, without the media coverage, there would have been no critical appraisal of what went wrong…
December 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
the lower echelons may be heaving sighs of relief, and perhaps ready for promotion? not only that if they have been working under the duress of bad management better people might emerge.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
and who on earth would ever want to work in Haringey to plug the gaps? or any other lousy catchement area come to that. I know I wouldn’t.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
If everyone is sacked, then what? A chasm… The Sun is going to f*** it up
December 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Cool and Calm
The report seems to be heavily critical of the management, which is something of an advance; whether it will be carried through into senior people actually taking on responsibility for junior staff is another matter…
December 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Spot on June. fingers crossed.
I’m happy that the people at the top are having to take responsibilty instead of the individual Social Workers who had little or no supervision and huge unmanageable case-loads.
Like the Social Worker who had to carry the can for Victoria Climbie,
However, I’m sure the Sun disagrees and will hound them as infinitem coz that’s what they do best.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Well, according to the Evening Standard:
‘Two top councillors at Haringey fell on their swords today’
Funny, I could have sworn they were pushed…
December 1st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Perhaps the focus of the ‘targets’ will move now from paperwork etc to where it should be on vulnerable people
December 1st, 2008 at 5:07 pm
The Sun will undoubtedly claim that, were it not for the Sun, Haringay would have carried on in its own inimitable way, and battalions of children would have been slaughtered to appease the requirements of breaking news and reality tv.
The really nasty bit is that the Serious Case Review was so abysmally badly done that every other Serious Care Review in the country is put in doubt; I wonder what’s happening everywhere else?
December 1st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Will the Sun let it lie?