Judy Cooper
The government has appointed an academic and Hackney’s director of children’s services, Alan Wood, to decide if Doncaster council should be forced to outsource its children’s services department.
Any outsourcing would include the council’s current statutory duty to safeguard children and would be the first time any council will have been stripped of this duty.
The move is part of the government’s response to the Carlile Report on the much-publicised Edlington case where two looked-after children from Doncaster violently assaulted two other children. Doncaster council has repeatedly been rated as inadequate by Ofsted since 2008 despite government intervention.
Education secretary Michael Gove (pictured) said the repeated failures meant “more radical action is now required”.
Any recommendations made by Wood and Julian Le Grand, a government adviser on the development of public sector mutuals in the health sector and a professor at the London School of Economics, will be made to Gove by the end of May.
In the meantime the Gove has ordered Doncaster council to immediately contract with an “external delivery partner” to improve child protection standards.
Peter Davies, Mayor of Doncaster, pointed out that the Department for Education (DfE), in its supervisory role, has had shared responsibility for the improvement of children’s services in Doncaster since April 2009.
“DfE acknowledged progress made together as recently as our last annual review and were considering reducing their involvement, even though improvements remained to be made. It is perhaps unfortunate that they have taken five months to respond to the latest inspection but we welcome any input that will allow us to move forward even faster and build a stable service.”
Picture credit: Rex Features
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