Child Services Slammed After 'Spectacular' Failures (From Crewe Guardian)

Child Services Slammed After 'Spectacular' Failures

12:30pm Wednesday 1st July 2009

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CHILD services in South Cheshire have been blasted after the Ombudsman discovered ‘comprehensive and spectacular’ failures in the care of a local girl.

The youngest of three children and now a woman of 20, the girl was from the Crewe and Nantwich area but has not been named in the report and is referred to only as L.

Local Government Ombudsman Anne Seex found that failures by the former Cheshire County Council led to the girl, who was in the care of the council, never attending secondary school.

In her report, she said: “It failed, comprehensively and spectacularly, to fulfill its responsibilities for [the child] or to promote her welfare.”

When she was a small child L was on the child protection register and then, from the age of 12, in the care of the council but placed to live with her mother.

L’s mother suffered from mental illness and was prone to volatile, violent and sometimes bizarre behaviour.

The report said that L was a bright child but from Easter 2000 her mother stopped her from attending her last year at primary school.

And, despite being in the council’s care from February 2002, L reached school leaving age in 2005 without ever attending secondary school.

L’s only education from the age of 10 was a maximum of 10 hours a week with a tutor at the local library, but there were significant periods without any education at all.

With the help of the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS), L complained to the council.

Although it accepted some fault, L was dissatisfied and complained to the Ombudsman, saying: “Why did Children’s Services place me with my mother when they knew that she was so violent?

“They always used to come with two people to see us as they were scared but yet they left little kids with her.

“How can they say they know what I wanted when I was only seeing someone every year or so and they were always changing.

“I could not say get me out of Mum’s house because of what she would do to me “They are making it seem like they were being good to me, listening to me and allowing me not to go to school. I wanted to go to school.”

While recognising that L's age and declared desire to stay with her mother posed considerable challenges, the Ombudsman found numerous, serious, specific failures as well as the overarching maladministration of failing to fulfill its parental responsibility for L or to promote her welfare.

The Ombudsman said: “L was and is capable of achieving a level of education and qualifications that could make a very significant difference to her earning potential.

“Although she is succeeding in her current chosen career, it is not secure and her lack of education and qualifications may become a major disadvantage for her.

“The injustice caused to L by the council’s maladministration is long term and enduring.”

“Once L was old enough to assert her independence from her mother she made tremendous efforts to establish a career and prove herself.

“Her willingness and ability to do this despite her difficult childhood and adolescence is a tribute to her character, intelligence and capability.

“It also serves as an illustration of her potential that should humble those professionals who accepted her disrupted and inadequate educational provision as sufficient for a child in their care.”

The Ombudsman recommends that Cheshire East Council, as successor to Cheshire County Council, should now apologise to L and agree with her a detailed plan for delivering the previous commitments made by the county council.

She further said that the council should make £45,000 available either for immediate investment in purchasing a home or to be held in an interest-bearing account and released to her when she is 30 years of age or in equal annual thirds when she embarks on and maintains a programme of education leading to qualifications – whichever is the sooner.

Reacting to the report, local MP Edward Timpson, who is a former family law barrister, said: “I have read the report, and its findings are very concerning.

"I will be writing to the new director of Children's Services at Cheshire East Council, the County Council's successor organisation, to arrange a meeting as soon as possible to discuss both the ramifications of this report as well as the plans of the new authority to fulfil its responsibilities to all children in care in Crewe and Nantwich.”

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