Last week Wokingham was again told its safeguarding service was “poor” and was lumped together with the likes of Haringey in the bottom 9 councils in the country for child protection.  This follows on from last year’s inspection, that came to a similar conclusion.  Just so you are clear, an organisation that is judged poor is (to use Ofsted’s exact words)An organisation that does not meet minimum requirements

That does not mean that nothing has improved.  But it does mean that Ofsted don’t think there has been enough improvement.  And they still have concerns over safeguarding. 

There is a whole new team in place in Children’s Services, and a new Exec member.   And the money that was chopped out of the service about 3 years ago has been put back in.  It is going to be tough to recruit permanent social workers, because it is for everyone.  And there are other problems to do with strategic education planning that are going to start rearing their heads soon.  But probably the service is finally getting better rather than getting worse.

But it never should have got into this state.  Why did it?  In my view it was a result of the Tories focusing more on saving money than on the effect of cuts on the services they were cutting.  Plus of the Tories not listening to what we or officers told them.  Plus the Tories doing everything in secret, so that no-one could find out what was going on.  

And why do I think that?  Because the Tories were warned by officers in September 2007 (yes, 2007) that there were problems with safeguarding – problems that were being made worse by the extra spending cuts they were demanding.  And officers also drew attention to the fact that these problems had been flagged up as far back as August 2006.  How do we know?  Because in early 2009 (yes, 2009) I got the papers we had asked for under a Freedom of Information request in Spring 2008 (yes, 2008), and in those papers was a previously secret report, which said all those things.

Did the Tories immediately try to fix the problems?  No they did not.  They just cut a further £300,000 from the budget, instead of the £1.2 million that they had been intending to cut. 

They did not seriously start fixing anything until after the Joint Area Review  report came out – available to the council in September 2008, and to the public early in 2009.    It appears that once the information became public, they realised they had to act.   Absolutely disgraceful that they waited until then.

This year’s Ofsted judgement still gives cause for concern on safeguarding.  You can read what they have to say about Wokingham at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxcare_providers/la_view/(leaid)/872 

Being the Leader of the Opposition on the council, I was interviewed about all this by the BBC last Friday.  As the reporter made clear in the piece, the interview had to take place outside, in the fog, as I was forbidden to use my office.  Clearly, the council are feeling just a touch defensive about their performance.  And with good cause.

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