An east London local authority has drafted in the charity Coram to vethow it safeguards children in a pioneering move that could be replicatednationally after Lord Laming slammed child protection services lastweek.
Waltham Forest Council has awarded Coram a three-year contract toscrutinise all decisions by social workers to take children into care.The aim is to check whether the decision is in the child's bestinterests.
At its last inspection, the council was rated "good" for safeguardingchildren. It says the move will help it to implement the controversialPublic Law Outline, which aims to cut delays in the time it takes to putchildren into care.
Last week, Justice Secretary Jack Straw appointed lawyer Francis Plowdento lead a review into court fees in public law cases brought under theChildren Act 1989. The government has pledged to abolish court fees ifthey are found to be a barrier to taking children into care. The movefollows Lord Laming's report, The Protection of Children in England,which branded the delay in such cases as "unacceptable".
CYP Now understands that the Ministry of Justice is tracking work inWaltham Forest to see if the model should be expanded.
Renuka Jeyarajah-Dent, director of operations at Coram, said: "We willbe interrogating the information given to us by Waltham Forest. We willwork actively with the parents to test whether they can change beforetheir child becomes damaged."
Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass (the Children and FamilyCourt Advisory Support Service), said the project has huge potential. Hesaid: "Coram is completing a multi-disciplinary assessment atpre-proceedings stage. Therefore you don't need to call in expertopinion once the case gets into the courts, which is often why casesbecome delayed."
Douglas said that in 50 per cent of such cases, basic assessments areunfit for purpose and are often carried out over long periods of time.Coram's assessments will be done as quickly as possible.
"It's easier for a judge to make a decision if assessments are done in ashort period of time," he said.
Lucy Erber, acting group manager of community safeguarding andintervention at Waltham Forest's children and young people's service'said: "We think it is best to outsource this sort of work to get fullyindependent assessments."
