Surrey County Conservatives

Members will be aware that services to vulnerable children in Surrey were recently subject to an inspection by Ofsted, the governing body for education standards.

I am aware that many members have expressed a desire to see this inspection report over recent weeks but it was subject to a strict embargo by Ofsted until today.

Firstly, I would like to set the Joint Area Review (JAR) in context.

The JAR is an inspection of all agencies providing services to vulnerable children in Surrey – this includes the county council, the Primary Care Trust, individual NHS Trusts, Surrey Police, the Learning and Skills Council, the Youth Justice Board, and the Connexions service.

Overall, services to the 262,000 young people in Surrey are good – our education service is first class and consistently performs above national averages, and at the other end of the spectrum our services for the most vulnerable – those in need of protection – have been considered good. We have also heard today that the council is in good shape elsewhere, with a positive corporate assessment.

However the Ofsted review is critical of some of the services provided by our partners and us to vulnerable children. In particular these criticisms relate to children classed as “in need”, those requiring preventative social care services, children with learning disabilities and teenage parents. In short, the JAR has identified a number of areas which are performing inadequately and this is simply not good enough.

I was personally shocked by these findings – the thought that our services to this group of children are not good enough is for me upsetting. Ultimately we are all involved in public services for the same reason – to make a positive difference for our communities – and reports like this hit us hard, both professionally and personally. We are all responsible for children in Surrey and this report will be unacceptable to every member here today.

As a council we must recognise, accept and act with urgency on the findings of the inspection. We have taken tough decisions and continue to do so. If other actions need to be taken, we will take them. We all have a role as corporate parents and no member in this chamber will accept anything less than significant, swift and lasting improvement.

Already the council has:

· Brought senior and experienced senior managers into the Families Directorate on an interim basis.;

· We have reviewed over 3,000 case files for the Children in Need group;

· Of those, some 400 required further work to ensure children have been seen or assessed, and details recorded;

· As a result of this work, around 40 children have been made subject of a child protection plan and a further 20 have become Looked After;

· All staff Ofsted identified as requiring clarity over CRB status have now either been successfully checked or are being checked

· Where checks are ongoing, individuals are being supervised by a senior colleague with a valid CRB;

· To strengthen Safeguarding, Andy Roberts will take the role of chair of the Safeguarding Board until a suitably experienced and independent appointee is recruited;

· Recognised the important role that scrutiny has to play. The Select Committee and other select chairs will be establishing scrutiny arrangements to monitor action;

· To enable faster and better partnership working we have created an Executive group of the CYP Commissioning Partnership, comprising senior officers from the PCT, Surrey County Council, Surrey Police, and the Learning Skills Council.

· A clear Action Plan has been developed, which addresses the issues raised and will guide further improvement. This will be refined further over the coming weeks.

· I have called for an external review of the Children’s Service next January and a further such review at the beginning of 2010 to check we are making all the progress we should.

The universal provision to children in Surrey is good and when vulnerable children receive a service it is good to excellent. Benchmarking data also shows we do not have higher thresholds than our comparative authorities and that we deal with the expected number of referred children for an authority of Surrey’s size. But we have been let down by inadequate processing of referrals and the quality of case file management.

The important thing now is to ensure that the council pulls together to put right the findings of the report and that we all do everything we can to help improve these critical services for children in need in Surrey. We have taken rapid action to correct the weaknesses identified in the report. We now need to sustain this effort, and maintain our focus on services for children in need over the next two to three years, to ensure that we embed the high standards we all wish to see.