Bernadette McNally appointed Birmingham director of children's services

Bernadette McNally, currently executive director of social services at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, will take up the post in November taking over from the authority’s director of people, Peter Hay, who has been in charge on an interim basis since last summer.

Birmingham Council said McNally will be tasked with driving improvement within the department, which has been rated as “inadequate” by regulator Ofsted since 2009.

Mark Rogers, chief executive of Birmingham Council, said McNally had been at the forefront of successful change in Belfast and is an “experienced strategic planner and innovative thinker”.

“Bernadette has demonstrated a clear child focus in all the roles she has occupied and it is notable that it was for her services to children and social work that she was recognised with the award of an OBE in 2011,” he said.  

“These characteristics make her ideally suited to the job she will be doing here in the city.”
McNally, who is due to take over in November, will be in charge of a department that had its most recent “inadequate” rating handed down in May.

The Department for Education has previously warned the council that children’s services could be taken out of the authority’s control unless improvements are made.

Since then, an independent review of the department led by professor Julian Le Grand published in March also raised serious concerns about the standard of services.

A second review, also to be carried out by Le Grand and set to report in September, is to draw up what options are available to the council for improving services.

The authority said the core purpose of McNally’s role will be to drive the improvement agenda, ensuring proper oversight of a change programme put together by the city’s children’s commissioner Lord Warner, who was appointed in March to oversee the department.

In her current role at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust McNally is responsible for social work, women’s and children’s services.

She is the latest in a long line of officials charged with turning around children's social care in Birmingham since it was first rated “inadequate” in 2009.

In the five years since, there have been four directors in charge of the service: Tony Howell, Eleanor Brazil, Peter Duxbury, and Peter Hay.