The figures are compiled as part of a special report on the future of children’s services directors for the current edition of the magazine. Between 2008 and 2009, the turnover rate stood at 19.7 per cent, whereas it climbed to 34.2 per cent between 2012 and 2013.
While there will be a multitude of reasons for directors moving on, the figures suggest performance pressures may be taking their toll in some areas, with the buck often stopping at the door of the DCS.
James Rook, manager of social work consultancy Skylakes, said: “We’re seeing directors being used as scapegoats all over the country. When there are failings, boards and improvement panels have to be seen to be doing something and the easiest statement to put out is they are changing leadership.”
Colin Green, former DCS in Coventry – the home of murdered four-year-old Daniel Pelka – last month had his subsequent appointment as chair of Tower Hamlets local safeguarding children board withdrawn. He said services that are struggling need some level of stability and continuity.
“Struggling organisations can take years to fix and that is very difficult for local politicians and for government,” he said. “It doesn’t take a lot to destabilise and there’s a lack of recognition of how fragile a plant this is.”
The much-criticised councils Birmingham and Doncaster are among those to have had four DCSs in the past five years.
Sharon Shoesmith, sacked in November 2008 from her DCS post in Haringey by the then Children’s Secretary Ed Balls over the Peter Connelly tragedy, said: “You look at politicians who for one reason or other have had to resign or got into difficulty, and they come back. It’s the role they resign from.
“But when you’re a DCS it’s personal. You suddenly have no past worthy of mention and no future. It wipes you out. It’s almost as if you are tainted as a murderer.
“I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs but haven’t worked since and will never work again,” added Shoesmith, who is on the verge of completing her PhD exploring the impact of child homicide in an attempt to unpick the reaction to the Peter Connelly case.
Despite the rise in turnover, 26 of the 152 authorities show remarkable stability, with the same DCS in post throughout at least the last five years.
The role of DCS is also rapidly expanding: the children’s services director now has additional responsibility for adult social care in 59 councils (39 per cent), ranging from small areas such as Rutland, to London boroughs and large counties including Devon and Warwickshire.
Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president Andrew Webb, who serves as “director of people” in Stockport, said: “The current regulations require us to test whether we’ve got sufficient focus on children’s services if we add duties to the core job. So we ought to be doing it on a risk-assessed basis. In a medium-sized authority like mine there are some quite significant potential gains.”
A handful of DCSs have also taken over responsibility for children’s services in neighbouring authorities.
The figures are based on the Little Blue Book directory of DCSs that CYP Now produces every year on behalf of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.
Twenty directors (13.2 per cent – accounting for just over one in eight) are in post on a temporary basis. The ADCS website currently lists 18 directors as “interim” and a further two as “acting”.
In an encouraging sign of DCSs yielding wider corporate influence, six also serve as their local authority’s deputy chief executive: Jane Portman in Bournemouth; Edwina Grant in Central Bedfordshire; John Coughlan in Hampshire; Carol Chambers in Rutland; Eric Robinson in Staffordshire; and Alan Adams in Waltham Forest.
The full report is in this week’s print edition of CYP Now and online.
