Broken. It is the short, stark word Chris Pratt, the director of children’s services at Doncaster, uses to describe the situation he inherited when he joined the South Yorkshire council in February 2010. Children’s services in Doncaster were a public service ground zero.
A spate of child deaths, a succession of critical Ofsted inspections and direct intervention from government ministers were just the tip of the town’s dysfunctional iceberg.
"When I arrived there was just a turbulence of people coming and going," recalls Pratt. "The front-door safeguarding service, for example, had 24 managers in 18 months."
Against this backdrop, it is something of an achievement that last November, Ofsted gave Doncaster an "adequate" rating in its annual children’s services assessment. Pratt acknowledges there is much more room for improvement, but going from basket case to adequate in two years is no mean feat.
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