Council: 'Children in care are safe'

THE HEAD of the city council's social work department has insisted 'children are safe' in Nottingham, despite concerns raised by a union.

Ann Goldsmith, interim head of specialist services at Nottingham City Council, has given a robust defence of the authority's care of vulnerable children.

Last week, Unison claimed children are being put in danger because of staff shortages and poor IT.

But in an interview with the Evening Post, Ms Goldsmith said: "That is completely incorrect. I am very confident that children are safe."

Unison has held meetings with social workers, at which the unions says staff claimed the situation in social services was "dangerous, frightening and leading to massive stress levels".

A protest is to be held and members will be balloted on strike action.

But Ms Goldsmith has refuted some of their claims.

She said: "The case loads are not unusually high if you look at other authorities. The average case load is probably 16. Quite a few social workers have 16 children, one or two have high case loads but it changes every day. One person has over 24. That can happen if you have a family with a lot of children in it."

The union claims an internal city council report produced more than five years ago recommended 12 to 14 cases per social worker would be appropriate, but Ms Goldsmith said the Government's Social Work Task Force is currently considering what the maximum case load should be.

The council has also introduced a system to assess work load.

Ms Goldsmith said: "The majority of teams, their work load was found to be sustainable. A number of workers were found to have high work loads and managers were tasked to look at those and opportunities to move cases around."

Ms Goldsmith said she believed the council's full complement of social workers, which is 100, was "probably adequate".

Currently, 16 of those posts are covered by agency staff, but the council is trying to recruit more permanent workers and interviews will be held

She said: "We are looking for six additional social workers. The vacancy level has been fairly stable since last October.

"There has been an increase in referrals since Baby P [a child who died in Haringey, which resulted in severe criticism of the local council] so social workers probably are more stretched than they were."

There has been a delay in the recruitment process since the social work positions were subject to a council wide vacancy freeze before the end of the financial year on March 31, said Ms Goldsmith.

However, Ms Goldsmith said there was more money – just under £500,000 – available for social work in this financial year, which will pay for extra staff.

In response to other Unison criticisms, Ms Goldsmith insisted, the council did "not allocate investigations of child protection concerns to newly qualified staff".

She said nationally there had been a recognition the IT systems are unwieldy and can reduce the time available to social workers to spend with families.

"The system in use in Nottingham is used in a number of other authorities," she said. "Having said that the Government has said look at your systems to see how you can streamline them and make them more user friendly. We have work going on during the summer."

Ms Goldsmith said she was "surprised" at the timing of union's outspoken remarks since the council is increasing its investment in the service.

A protest will be held by Unison members tomorrow, outside the Council House, in Old Market Square.