In a letter to the leader of Birmingham City Council Sir Albert Bore, children’s minister Edward Timpson said the review into the struggling department will look at the council’s plans for change, whether they are sufficient, and what alternatives may be appropriate.
The review will be held instead of an inspection of progress at the authority, which had been due to be conducted by Ofsted this month.
It will be led by Julian Le Grand, who earlier this year published a report that recommended that children's services in Doncaster be split off from local authority control and instead run by an independent trust.
Le Grand’s team will include Alan Wood, director of children’s services in Hackney, who is currently also overseeing the Doncaster transfer, as well as Chief Social Worker for Children Isabelle Trowler.
The move follows years of concerns over standards at the UK’s largest local authority including high profile child protection scandals.
Timpson said he expects the review team to also involve “other leading practitioners” in the children’s services sector including “directors of children’s services leading innovative practices elsewhere in the country”.
Timpson stressed in the letter that a decision on the future of the children’s services department has yet to be taken, amid reports earlier this month that the government was preparing to intervene.
“I should be clear, not least in the light of media speculation earlier this month, that no decisions have been taken about the action we will take following this advice,” he said.
“Nor do I have a pre-determined view of the right next steps.”
Andrew Webb, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS), said the review represents a "good solution" for Birmingham City Council.
"This co-constructed model of sector led improvement support will provide a more appropriate review of the progress that Birmingham City Council children’s services is making under the leadership of Peter Hay, than an Ofsted inspection could have delivered," he said.
Birmingham’s children’s services department has been rated inadequate by Ofsted since 2009 and has been in the spotlight over child protection scandals including the case of two-year-old Keanu Williams, who was beaten to death by his mother in 2011, and seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death in 2008.
The government is currently in the process of setting up an independent trust to run services in Doncaster, which has been under government supervision since March 2009.
Earlier this month Education Secretary Michael Gove predicted that the model of improvement being used there “will grow” in the future.
