Doncaster to carry out independent safeguarding review

Mayor of Doncaster Martin Winter said the review, which will begin on Wednesday 14 January, will probe "why we have experienced such difficulties in our delivery of child safety, and crucially, how and what lessons can be learned".

Councillors in the town will hold an extraordinary public meeting on Tuesday to express their concerns about safeguarding issues.

The DCSF will send a "diagnostic team" to Doncaster to address the "root causes" of underperformance in Doncaster's children's services department after serious case reviews were ordered into the deaths of seven children in the borough since 2004, five of them since December 2007.

Doncaster was classified as inadequate by Ofsted in its annual performance assessment, published in December. It expressed particular concern that one in four child protection cases were not allocated to a social worker, and said the local safeguarding children board had not ensured the effective management of child protection allegations.

Doncaster also assessed itself as inadequate prior to the Ofsted report.

In a letter to Winter, children's minister Beverley Hughes said the review would encompass Doncaster's leadership and management capacity, performance management arrangement and operations systems with the children's services directorate and the council as a whole.

Winter said: "I am fully supportive of this approach and look forward to us working together in improving our safeguarding agenda further."

Councillor Sandra Holland, chair of the council's overview and scrutiny management committee, said that unless the council fully co-operated with DCFS officials and sets up a plan to put things right, "the government should be ready to take over the running of children's services".