It’s been a bad week for Children in Salford. At the start of the week, St. James RC Primary School in Pendleton was the subject of an arson attack, which saw the roof severely damaged – but thanks to the quick response and bravery of local firefighters, the damage was contained and valuable equipment and school work was saved.
On Thursday, the Salford Advertiser & Manchester Evening News broke the story that I had feared could happen again. Earlier in May of this year, OfSted inspected Salford’s Childrens Services and it seems the report is going to, once again, rate the service as inadequate.
This is the second time Salford’s Childrens Services has been rated inadquate by OfSted, both times under the stewardship of Langworthy Councillor John Warmisham. After the last inadequate rating, the council gave undertakings to the government it would improve the service (and briefly it did). Now, if the MEN article is correct, the council’s efforts have failed and our looked-after children are once again at risk.
I call on our new coalition government to take decisive action and step in to take control of Salford’s Childrens Services and rescue things before another, inevitable, death occurs. I do not want another Demi-Leigh Mahon case hitting the Advertiser’s front page – but it’s obvious to me that Salford Council cannot be trusted to take care of our children at the moment. The department needs radical overhaul – I do not know what that means in terms of staffing, Jill Baker (former strategic director of Childrens Services) was sacked, Chief Executive Barbara Spicer took over temporarily and then handed the reigns over to Jill Baker’s former deputy, Nick Page.
Further, if the Salford Labour cabinet will not take former Lead Member for Childrens Services John Warmisham to task,then I would hope that local Conservatives and Salford Liberal Democrats can come together to push for a full investigation into what has gone wrong.
As I look across my road to the newly-built Willow Tree Primary school due to open in September, I worry what will happen to those children that didn’t make it into the new school (because it is too small to occupy all the pupils who currently learn at the four schools it replaces). I worry about how our looked-after children are cared for in Salford Council’s childrens homes.
And I fear for Adult Social Care, John Warmisham’s new post in the cabinet. After the disasters he has left behind him at Childrens Services and Housing before that, things do not bode well for Salford’s older people.
These are the same people who actually pass judgement on if parents are capable of bringing up their own children, who go into peoples homes look in every room, check their cupboards, monitor the actions of how these parents treat there kids, cause so much unhappiness in families that are unfortunate enough to have neighbours, friends even family members (usually anonomously of course) contact this “inadequate” service who then without good reason in some cases carry out various actions such as placing the children on a plan “for their care” take children from parents who they refer to as “unfit parents” and then place them in care homes where the kids are subjected to punishments not allowed to be used by parents, such as loss of priveliges, sanctioning certain items, make the kids clean up their rooms, if they were at home still these services actually expect the parents to do this. As for the social workers who are the only people that seem to matter, they can write down on paper basically a load of rubbish, and once a review is heard the parents who are invited have to sit and listen to pure fabrication written on paper by these people some of whom wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped them in their face, the most the parent can do is try their best to tell the truth and quite frequently it is the word of the social worker which is believed, AND THE BEST PART OF THIS even if it is considered that the social worker has not done his job in helping the family and has proved wrong, the family are not apologised to, or have their children removed from the plans or orders not a chance they are actually given another social worker who if they are genuine and really want to help the families by actually telling the truth on the situation are quite often removed from the position of the families social worker and usually replaced by another who is incapable of managing in this role. AND ITS OFICIAL SALFORD CHILDRENS SERVICES ARE INADEQUATE SO WHY THE HELL ARE THEY ALLOWED TO PASS JUDGEMENT ON FAMILIES AND CAUSE THE FAMILY TO SUFFER. Not all parents pass their children on to anybody who will babysit and its the parents who never go out to the pub, look after their kids and who were doing their best at it, basically trying to teach the youngsters right from wrong at this moment in time its these parents who have the unwanted attention of Childrens Services. Its about time these parents are able to speak out against the whole charade, its about time there was somebody who will listen to them, can help them fight the slanderous accusations about being incapable as parents, who will stand up for the families that are being used as “examples” by this inadequate service. They will probably deny there are people unfairly on the plan but there are and its about time they were actually put on the stand and apologise for the suffering of many families.
[...] 2009, when it was rated ‘adequate’. But in fact, my blog readers may remember in June I wrote here about a scathing report from Ofsted which branded safeguarding services ‘inadequate’ for the [...]