News

North East Lincolnshire Council's children's department will become the first integrated service to face private sector intervention next month, despite improvements in children's social services.

Two firms have been invited to help run its learning and child care directorate for three years in a government-ordered move, despite the fact only its education service is deemed to be failing.

Children's social services came under fire during the Bichard inquiry into the Soham murders when it emerged that social workers had failed to deal adequately with allegations of underage sex involving Ian Huntley.


But the Commission for Social Care Inspection said the department was improving.

The decision raises the spectre of a spate of wholesale interventions in children's services based on poor performance in just one area, with the introduction of integrated inspections this year.

North East Lincolnshire chief executive George Krawiec, while welcoming the support, said: "The council has done a lot of work to improve children's social services...The [government] obviously decided that, because of the Children Act, [it] would do it for the whole of children's services."

Last year's Ofsted report - the trigger for the intervention - said the council's financial and performance management in education were poor, as were its prospects for improvement.

One children's services commentator said: "It doesn't seem to me that you need full-scale intervention if there are particular bits of the service that need to develop."


However the intervention also highlights the problems councils face in integrating children's social care and education, which must fall under a single director by 2008.

Though a forerunner in this respect, having integrated in 2001, Ofsted said North East Lincolnshire had combined services "in name only".

Krawiec said the intervention, which he said was backed by "substantial" government funding, was in part designed "to get the integration going".

Questions have also been raised about the council's decision to turn to the private sector rather than another local authority along the lines of Kent's agreement to help Swindon's zero star-rated social services department.

It has selected a consortium of education consultants Mouchel Parkman and children's social care specialists Outcomes UK, as preferred bidder.