Birmingham appoints former social worker to run children's services trust

Birmingham City Council said Andy Couldrick was chosen for the post by a selection panel including representatives from the local authority, the Department for Education, Birmingham's children's commissioner, Dave Hill, and the chair of the Birmingham Children's Trust, Andrew Christie.

Couldrick previously worked as head of children's social care at Oxfordshire County Council before moving on to Wokingham Borough Council in 2011, firstly as director of children's services before being promoted to chief executive.

"As a social worker myself, I know how challenging and how rewarding what we do is, and how we have the opportunity, together, to change lives," Couldrick said.

"Anything I and the new trust can do, to make these challenges easier, to help improve how we work together, and to keep hold of the strong relationship with the city council, will be a pleasure as well as a privilege. I can't wait to start."

Now operating in shadow form, Birmingham Children's Trust is due to take control of services on a "business as usual" basis from April 2018.

Birmingham Children's Trust chair Andrew Christie told CYP Now that the newly created organisation's priority is to ensure no aspect of the service is failing when re-inspected by Ofsted in 2019. Children's services at the local authority have been rated as "inadequate" since 2009.

"The ambition is to get Birmingham children's services to the level of good and ideally outstanding," Christie said.

"The first stage will be the Ofsed re-inspection in two years' time. At the very least by that time we aim to have no services that are judged to be inadequate or failing and some of them already on the way to be being judged good."

Despite raising concerns around the safety of children during its most recent inspection in November last year, Ofsted did note some improvements, particularly around recruitment and retention of social workers at the service.

"We will be continuing the good work on recruitment and retention of experienced good social workers, in developing an experienced and capable leadership group and the good work in developing a range of specialist services to support the social work service. It is those areas we need to prioritise."

Christie said the decision to run the trust in shadow form for a year was made following talks with two other children's trusts, in Doncaster and Slough, which said they would have welcomed more time to finalise details.

"This gives time for senior leadership team to work out how they will work together and run the new organisation," Christie said.

"Secondly, it gives the board a chance to come together, plan the future, help set the objectives and develop the right relationship with the council that means we can properly prepare the contractual arrangement between the trust and council."

In total around 1,200 children's services staff will transfer to the trust.