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Social services in Wales are reeling yet again in the wake of another damning joint review, this time for the capital city, Cardiff.

This latest report on the failure of social services in the largest local authority in Wales presents a bleak picture of vulnerable children and adults failed by the system set up to protect them.

The report adds to a growing list of critical reports and reviews in Wales, including the Waterhouse report, Lost in Care, on the widespread abuse of children in care in north Wales.


The Audit Commission report Learning the Lessons - a summary of the key issues from the first six joint reviews in Wales - also made uncomfortable reading for the local authorities that had been inspected, with its conclusion that none of them was serving most people well.

It emphasised the importance of implementing robust safeguards to protect the most vulnerable in society. It noted too that the Waterhouse report served as a powerful reminder of the importance of listening to children and young people.

A key issue raised by the latest review is concern that young people are exposed to "unacceptable risks and the authority failing in its statutory obligations to children at risk or looked after''.

Cardiff is now placed in the bottom three of all departments in the UK, along with its neighbouring authority, the Vale of Glamorgan, and Walsall in the West Midlands. The Vale of Glamorgan's joint review, published in September 2000, also found that social services was failing to meet the needs of vulnerable children and adults and said there were poor prospects for improvement.

So serious is the problem in Cardiff that Jane Hutt, the Welsh assembly minister with responsibility for social services, has now given the council leader Russell Goodway six months to make improvements.

After meeting Goodway the minister said the council would have to bring in specialist external advice to help manage the changes.

If the inspection team that is due to be sent in next spring finds no improvement, the Welsh assembly may step in and take over the running of the troubled department. So what has gone wrong and how can the situation be improved?

Wales, unlike England, has no star rating system because of the differences in scale between the two countries. An assembly spokeswoman said that in Wales a more co-operative approach and close working partnerships were seen as more effective.

She said: "We are developing our own system of performance management and evaluation in Wales. This includes an evaluation framework that we have just developed and are about to implement and a set of performance indicators linked to the policy agreement with local government.

"This is also linked to the Wales Programme for Improvement which is based on the authorities' own analysis of strengths and weaknesses validated externally through audit and inspection. We are also seeking to align this with the approach in health which is similarly based and is not using star ratings."

But with Hutt locked in crisis talks with Goodway over the future of social services in Cardiff and the joint review's message that a complete overhaul of the service in the city is required, observers may be forgiven for questioning the Welsh authorities' ability to effectively analyse their own weaknesses.

In Cardiff's case, senior social workers say they were warning well in advance of the joint review of the serious flaws in the system and the consequences for service users. Their warnings, they say, went unheeded.

Both Charles Faber and Neil White were experienced social work managers. Last year Faber appeared on a local television programme highlighting his concerns that a child might die if pressure on front-line services was not eased. He voiced his fears too that children in care in the city were being neglected because of lack of resources and that pressure on colleagues was at crisis point. Only hours after his appearance he was suspended, although the council says his suspension and subsequent dismissal was due to poor financial management.


The joint review from the Audit Commission and the Social Services Inspectorate for Wales said Cardiff was defaulting on its statutory obligation to children at risk. It found that more than 160 children were exposed to serious risk and harm because the department was seriously overstretched.

White lost his appeal against dismissal last week. He claims he was sacked because he refused to discipline a worker at a residential home for older people in Cardiff who blew the whistle on alleged abuse of residents.

The council disputes White's claim. A spokesman said: "Mr White was dismissed for two specific breaches of the council's disciplinary policy, which constituted gross misconduct. The council refutes the allegation that Mr White was dismissed either because he was a whistleblower or because he refused to take disciplinary action against a whistleblower."

But the way that the council handled the investigation into the residential home, Hazelcroft, in Cardiff, was described by the joint review team as an example of "all that is dysfunctional within the authority".

Both Faber and White say they did their best to draw attention to the problems in the department long before the review but claim they were ignored. Sue Lent, another social worker and a member of the council's ruling Labour group, says she was bullied and intimidated when she raised her concerns about services two years ago.

She wrote a six-page report outlining her fears that children were being put at risk in a department that was overstretched and under-funded. The reaction to the report was, she says, less than favourable.

"I was told to withdraw my report and I received a letter from the chief executive's office threatening to take me to the ethical standards committee if I didn't do so. Charles, Neil and myself tried hard to raise a number of issues over a long period of time but we were ignored," she said.

According to the joint review there was, "a widely held view that a macho management culture had prevailed for many years and this was deemed to have member sanction. This perception is highly damaging to staff morale".

The council now has six months to put things right and has promised what it calls "a new era" in social services in the city. The changes will follow consultations that will give everyone connected with social care in Cardiff the chance to say what they think should be done.

In the meantime, Malcolm Russell, chairperson of the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru (ADSS), admits that the review has some difficult messages, but welcomes the fact that the council has committed itself to responding and producing proposals for strengthening services.

He says it is important to remember how difficult and demanding the task of managing social services is and that the report also recognised many areas of good practice.

For Cardiff council, the next six months is likely to be a time of change and upheaval as its refines and reorganises itself. For practitioners, the hope is that the Welsh capital will get the social services it needs and that their clients deserve. But the nagging concern for some is that it could all have been done so much sooner had the warning voices been heeded.