Question to Kent County Council [with answer], 9 February 2012: Social Worker Allocation and Assessment (Liberal Democrats on Kent County Council)

Question to Kent County Council [with answer], 9 February 2012: Social Worker Allocation and Assessment

February 9, 2012 2:46 PM

Question by Dan Daley to Cabinet Member for Specialist Childrens Services

Following the inspections by OFSTED during 2010, 2,600 children were identified as being without an allocated social worker. Will the Cabinet Member for Specialist Childrens Services please say:

a) how many days or weeks since referral each of these children had to wait for a social worker to be allocated, and

b) how many days or weeks since referral each child waited for an initial assessment to be made by the allocated worker?

Answer

I would like to thank Mr Daley for his question and I'm sure he shares my commitment to improving Children's Services. Many Members have increased their knowledge of Children's Services through membership of the Children's Services Improvement Panel, the Corporate Parenting Panel, the Shadow a Social Worker Scheme, corporate parenting training and Council meetings and briefings. It is vital that we all take our role as corporate parents seriously to ensure thatKentnever again receives a poor OFSTED judgement for safeguarding the most vulnerable children in the county.

To provide the level of detail requested by Mr Daley about allocation timescales would necessitate extensive analysis and this has not been possible within the timescales set by democratic services. However, I can provide assurances that the concerns regarding unallocated cases is something that I have taken very seriously, having had this issue brought to my attention as a result of the review undertaken by Malcolm Newsam who was appointed at the Leader's direction as the Interim Corporate Director for Specialist Children's Services.

By February 2011, Mr Newsam had identified significant concerns about unallocated and un-assessed cases and about the backlog of work in the system and that some of these had been unallocated or un-assessed for many months. Action was taken immediately to address these concerns including ensuring that all looked after children and all those with a child protection plan were immediately allocated. Managers were also required to take action to ensure cases were assessed and allocated and to support this, additional resource was recruited by commissioning a peripatetic team to come intoKentto clear the backlog of un-assessed and unallocated work.

This work was effective in achieving the allocation and assessment of children's cases. By 8 May 2011, there were a total of 338 unallocated cases, 71 of which had been unallocated for over 28 days. The backlog of the 2668 un-allocated cases had therefore been allocated by this time.

Members will also recall that since July 2011 the number of unallocated cases has consistently been fewer than 200, showing that in addition to having successfully addressed the concerns regarding unallocated case work, Children's Services are now allocating all new cases in a timely manner. The most recent unallocated case reporting supports this, with 61 cases unallocated as at the 29 January 2012, of which only 6 were unallocated for over 28 days.

In respect of timescales for carrying out initial assessments on unallocated cases, of the 2668 cases reviewed, 2021 cases had previously had an initial assessment, 1252 of these within 7 days of referral and 771 in more than 7 days. Subsequently, these cases had been held in a Team Leaders name pending allocation. A further 357 cases were referrals which had required the provision of information and advice only and therefore did not require allocation.

The final 259 unallocated cases in the cohort were more recent referrals that had not been assessed at the time the review was carried out and were waiting for the assessment to progress. Of these, 50 subsequently had an initial assessment within 7 days of the referral, 179 had an initial assessment more than 7 days after the referral and, for a variety of reasons such as subsequently being found to be requests for information or advice, 30 did not require an assessment to take place and led to no further action.

Liberal Democrats on Kent County Council