It goes almost without saying that the appointment of Eleanor Brazil as interim strategic director of Birmingham City Council’s Children, Young People and Families Department represents just about the last opportunity for management of social services to remain solely in local hands.
The damning indictment of an Ofsted report, identifying “inadequate” provision for children at risk of sexual and physical abuse, taken in the context of the unnecessary death of Khyra Ishaq, leaves the day-to-day activities of social workers in this city exposed as never before.
As the council embarks on yet another Government improvement plan, the possibility that children’s social care in Birmingham will eventually be placed in the hands of commissioners from Whitehall looms ever larger.
Whether removing responsibility from councillors and city officials would produce a better service, it is difficult to say. There can be little doubt, though, that Children’s Minister Tim Laughton is prepared to take such a draconian step if he thinks it necessary.
The good news for Birmingham is that Ms Brazil comes with an impressive track record in quickly turning around failing social services departments. Appointed to sort out Haringey after the Baby Peter scandal, she succeeded against the odds before moving on to perform a similar miracle in Leeds.
The experience she picked up in both authorities leaves her well placed to hit the ground running when she starts in Birmingham next week.
She will not be surprised to join a department where many social workers and their managers feel battered, bruised and utterly demotivated by the failure over many years of children’s social services to earn anything other than condemnation from Government inspectors.
During this time these people have often been badly led and not given the support from the then council’s corporate centre that they deserved.
They have been badly trained and even after years of promises that things will improve the council has to come to terms with one of Ofsted’s main concerns – that too many social workers in Birmingham simply are not aware of what they should and should not be doing. This was brought home in the case of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq who died at the hands of her brutal mother and stepfather, but only because social workers and education welfare officers did not understand that they possessed legal powers to assess Khyra and, if necessary, take her into care.
Significant additional funding has been poured into children’s services since 2004, but although lack of money may be part of the problem it is clearly not the only issue at stake here.
There is a temptation to gasp at Ms Brazil’s reported £1,000 a day salary, but if she can succeed in Birmingham where so many of her predecessors have failed she will be worth every penny.
Not only that, she will have given some hope to the hundreds of children who look to Birmingham social services to rescue them from mental and physical cruelty. We wish her well in the difficult task she faces.
