An expert who oversaw reforms of a London council’s social services department following the notorious Baby P tragedy has been appointed by the government to look into Croydon’s failing children services.
Eleanor Brazil: taking over Croydon’s children’s services
Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, announced at lunchtime that Eleanor Brazil is to be Commissioner for Children’s Services in Croydon, following the publication this morning of a damning report by Ofsted which described the children’s social services provided by the council as “inadequate”.
Brazil had previously been parachuted in to local authorities such as Leeds, Birmingham and Haringey. Brazil was praised for transforming social care in Haringey following the Baby Peter Connelly scandal.
In the DfE statutory direction issued today (which can be viewed in pdf format here), it states that Croydon Council should “co-operate with a Commissioner-led review as to whether the most effective way of securing and sustaining improvement in Croydon is to remove the control of children’s social care from the council for a period of time”.
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Croydon Council cannot wait to offset responsibility and financing to a Central Government Commissioner. I suspect it has been hoping this to happen all along.
It really is shameful and if it were a government then Ministers would be resigning and accepting responsibility for the shambles on their watch.
The largest London Borough has shown itself to be less than competent to run its own children’s’ services and has had to have an external commissioner imposed on it. The senior management and responsible politicians should all be hanging their heads in shame……and still they continue to hope against all reasonable hope that people will think that this is a good place to live and to buy an overpriced Lilliputian flat.
No shame, no logic.
Yes,, it is bad. And yes, a few resignations might make some people think that something is being done about it, though no – I don’t think government ministers would have resigned over this.
However, I don’t think senior management and politicians have been exactly jumping for joy over this issue – what makes you think they aren’t ashamed?
And how does talking the area down help anything? Inward investment in the council – particularly new homes – is about the only financial lifeline open to councils nowadays. And this investment is crucial if children’s services are to be improved without savaging other areas of spending, or hiking charges elsewhere.
Again, why do you think senior council representatives would do anything other than try and encourage this growth into Croydon?
I too am struggling to see the logic…?
And not just Children Services, Adult Safeguarding is a shambles. They lie, cover up, refuse to investigate, prejudice investigations that they do carry out, falsify minutes and reports, withhold crucial evidence from police and the list goes on. Head of Safeguarding refuses to deal with questions about his staffs evidenced lies. Head of Complaints refusing to investigate very serious allegations of Maladministration. False allegations made against me without any evidence, proven false that they had to pay me £100.00 for but the victimisation still continues. They even reported me to the Office of the Public Guardian without any evidence whatsoever. In every phone call or meeting there is usually 5 of them against one of me. The Government should investigate Adult Safeguarding as well.