Lord Warner, who was appointed in March as Birmingham’s independent children’s commissioner by former Education Secretary Michael Gove, said that a three-year improvement plan he has developed to turn the failing department around will be undeliverable unless the workforce issues are resolved.
In addition, Warner warned that the authority’s “formidable financial challenges” – he and the council have calculated that £123m is needed over the next three years to deliver sustained changes to children’s services – could also undermine the improvement plan.
“Without some guarantee of sufficient resources and a credible social work recruitment and retention strategy, the three-year improvement plan will not be delivered,” Warner said in a progress report submitted this week to the council’s education and vulnerable children scrutiny committee.
Warner, a former health minister during the third term of Tony Blair’s Labour government, was brought in to turn around children’s services after a government-commissioned independent review of the department by professor Julian Le Grand raised concerns about social work practice.
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