I am currently writing a piece on morale and how children's/adult's service departments/managers go about lifting social care staff's morale after being publically criticised. The hook for this is the the recent Court of Appeal case involving East Sussex Council where senior judges said it had rushed through an adoption to prevent a challenge by the child's father. The council proceeded with an adoption placement the day before the child's father was due in court to fight to keep his 18-month-old daughter. While his appeal with dismissed the judges condemed the council's conduct as "disgraceful" and said it had deliberatley set out to prevent the father from being heard in court.

 Does anyone have experience of managers/directors trying to raise morale after the council has been publically criticised and if so what did you think of their efforts?

My experience of higher management supporting staff and lifting morale after we had a baby die was for them to totally ignore the issues of staff morale to the extent the day it hit the press they remained at the civic centre all day until late in the afternoon when they knew few staff would be around then enter the building walk straight into the managers office ignoring the staff in the office and not leave until we all had. 

Thank you Lins. That sounds awful. The burying the head in the sand technique is well known to come back and bite people further down the line but some quarters still seem to go down this route.

 It is interesting watching how Birmingham approach their current situation. I would love to be privy to the converstations that must be going on between the MP and the director of children's services.