"We're determined to make it work," he says of the strategic partnership ordered by the Department for Education and Skills following a critical Ofsted report in December. Education specialists Mouchel Parkman and social care consultants Outcomes UK will work with the council to raise standards over a three-year period, starting on 1 June (Children Now, 11-17 May).
Krawiec is determined to see it as an opportunity to achieve an integrated children's services department, rather than as a punishment.
But the intervention acts as a warning to other senior managers of integrated children's services. Private sector involvement will straddle education and social care, even though Ofsted only criticised education. The Commission for Social Care Inspection gave the council's social services a one-star rating last year and rated its capacity to improve children's services as promising, an improvement from 2002 when special measures were introduced after a zero rating.
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