Troubled Rotherham will use views of sexual exploitation victims to improve services

Rotherham council will use the views of children’s social care service users and victims of child sexual exploitation to help measure and monitor its journey towards tackling the abuse.

The troubled council’s improvement plan, ‘A Fresh Start’, was submitted to council members last week. It detailed plans to use the voices of service users and child sexual exploitation (CSE) survivors to help measure its future success.

The report was submitted by the commissioners currently overseeing Rotherham’s improvement plans. It follows Louise Casey’s damning report on the council, published in February.

‘Outstanding ambitions’

The commissioners have also set the ambitious target for the children’s services, rated inadequate by Ofsted last year, to be rated ‘outstanding’ by 2018.

Staff training and making Rotherham a “child-centred borough” are high on the list of priorities for the commissioners, who were appointed by local government and communities secretary Eric Pickles in the aftermath of Casey’s critical report.

The commissioners have also set the ambitious target for the children’s services, rated inadequate by Ofsted last year, to be rated ‘outstanding’ by 2018.

Scrutiny programme

The plan sets out how the council will support improvements in social care, from accommodating staff at the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub and providing corporate support to recruitment and training and ICT support to facilitate record-keeping.

“Corporate support will continue to be needed for long-term recruitment to the CSE team and continued training programmes,” the commissioners said.

Commissioners will pursue “visible elected member leadership on looked-after children and child protection issues” through the training of political groups.

A scrutiny programme to trial and test new ways of working to tackle CSE in the council will be run over the next year.