Funding for Birmingham recovery plan falls short of estimate

The council's cabinet has approved £94.2m worth of additional money over the next three years to improve its beleaguered children's services department, which was rated as "inadequate" by Ofsted last May.

But this is £45.8m less than the original additional spending estimate made in December by Lord Warner, the independent children's commissioner appointed by the government to turn around the department.

It is also £28.8m less than the £123m Birmingham council estimated would be needed to deliver effective and sustainable improvement. This figure was released by the council in December last year in consultation with Lord Warner.

At the time Lord Warner said: "Without some guarantee of sufficient resources and a credible social work recruitment and retention strategy, the three-year improvement plan will not be delivered."

In documents presented to cabinet the council admits that Lord Warner, has "not formally signed off" this latest funding plan.

He told CYP Now that he is unable to comment on whether the funding will be enough because his final report has been submitted to the DfE for consideration by whoever is appointed Education Secretary after the election. But he added that the £140m figure was "an early guesstimate, not a final figure".

The documents add: "We need to move forward with delivery and will be working with him [Lord Warner] to address any concerns he may raise during the remainder of his tenure as the children's commissioner."

The documents also outline the year-by-year spending breakdown for delivering the Early Help and Children's Social Care Improvement Plan. An extra £27.5m has already been made available for 2015/16, and will be followed by £32.2m in 2016/17 and £34.5m in 2017/18.

The additional money includes boosting the number of permanent frontline social workers and reducing the current reliance on agency staff.

In January 2015, the number of permanent full-time equivalent posts was 354, but it is hoped this will increase to 503 by March 2017. Over the same period it hopes to almost halve the number of agency full-time equivalent frontline social worker posts from 154 to 89.

By March 2017 the council hopes to have increased the total number of full-time equivalent frontline social care workforce in children's services to 591, an increase of 80 on January 2015's tally.

The council has said that a reduction in spending on consultants has contributed to the lower amount being pledged to fund its improvement plan.

A Birmingham City Council spokesman said: "It was originally anticipated that the additional cost of delivering the Early Help and Children's Social Care Improvement Plan could be as much as £123m for the next three years. However, we are now spending significantly less on consultants and instead making greater use of council staff to support improvement, which has reduced the additional funding required.
 
"Our priorities for this funding are ensuring safe staffing levels and funding the cost of children in care - in fact, we have actually increased investment in these areas since December 2014, with an additional £1.6m for children on the cusp of care being agreed in the budget."

In March, it emerged that the council was struggling to address its social worker recruitment crisis. Figures presented to the cabinet revealed that a third of posts were still vacant.

Lord Warner is set to carry on advising the council at least until after the general election on May 7.