Lord Warner to continue advising Birmingham Council
Joe Lepper
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Birmingham City Council's government-appointed children's commissioner is to carry on advising its struggling children's services department beyond his current contract.
Although Lord Norman Warner's one-year contract ends on 31 March, the council has said he will carry on at least until after the general election on 7 May.
A council spokeswoman confirmed: “Lord Warner will be staying till after the election, working with the council’s leadership team to revise its three-year improvement plan in line with priorities for the next two years.”
The Department for Education appointed Lord Warner, a former Labour health minister, to turn around children's social care in the city.
But there is mounting concern that the council is struggling to turn around the department, which was rated as “inadequate” by Ofsted last May.
Earlier this month, the extent of the department’s chronic social worker shortage emerged. Figures presented to the cabinet showed that a third of all frontline children’s social worker posts are vacant.
At a meeting of the council’s children services scrutiny committee last week Lord Warner said he is currently compiling his final report for the Education Secretary and that social worker recruitment and the retention of experienced social workers remained priorities.
The meeting also heard a progress report on the first year priorities for the three-year improvement plan.
This includes producing a plan to improve fostering and adoption services and an overhaul of the social work structure, with teams realigned into ten districts with a greater focus on multi-agency work.
The council will also develop more opportunities for experienced social workers at the council through principal social worker roles and improvements in IT this year.
Another priority is to finalise a budget for improvement work over the next three years. Lord Warner has previously said that £123m is needed to turn around the department.
