"Rotherham council changed me," says Casey

Speaking at the NSPCC’s ‘How safe are our children?’ conference last week, Casey spoke about her findings after carrying out an investigation into Rotherham Council earlier this year.

Casey said she found ”inadequacies” concerning corporate parenting and the treatment of vulnerable children, and said the council had a tolerance of pregnancies, STIs and older boyfriends. 

The report of inspection, published in February, deemed the council not fit for purpose. It “remains in denial about the scale of CSE and continues to fail vulnerable children,” it said, before concluding that the council required a “fresh start”.

“Rotherham’s focus now is to think about how we protect these children,” Casey said, before questioning whether this picture was unique to Rotherham, or if it could be happening “all over the country”.

Casey called for a reform of the public sector to “do better by children", and said social workers were being left with too many responsibilties. 

“Safeguarding children shouldn’t just be left to social services. It’s not okay to put everything on the shoulders of social workers. They’re carrying too much of the load, when they should be doing one thing very well.”

Casey also said that austerity has “taken its toll” on local government. “It’s caught up in too much bureaucracy and inaction, with insufficient challenges to the system.”

“Something will have to change,” Casey said. “Coming out of Rotherham changed me. We didn’t do a good enough job. Reform has to come.”