CHILDREN’S Services in Bradford have been described by the “canary in the coal mine” during a Council Meeting.

The service will be run by a newly formed Children’s Trust from Spring, after Bradford Council was deemed not to be capable of improving at a fast enough pace.

At a meeting of Bradford Council, Councillor Jeanette Sunderland (Lib Dem, Idle and Thackley) said issues such as demoralised staff and high turnover meant it was “inevitable” that the service would be removed from full Council control.

She brought forward a motion at the meeting calling for greater scrutiny of Children’s Service arrangements in future.

The trust will operate as an “arm’s length” organisation, which will include Council representatives and be funded by Bradford Council, but will operate separately.

Cllr Sunderland’s motion said the Trust would offer “a fresh start, independence from wider issues of concern to the Council, increased speed of decision-making and the potential attract high calibre staff.”

Speaking on her motion, she was highly critical of leadership for allowing the Service to get in a state where Government had no confidence the Council could improve it.

Referring to the problems in Bradford, Cllr Sunderland said: “It is not someone else’s fault or the fault of staff, it is not a national problem – if it was then all authorities would require this level of intervention. We got here because of cuts to Early Help, poor leadership and management and a lack of capacity to improve for the benefit for our most vulnerable children.”

She said the Council needed to “put to bed the illusion that we had a choice over whether we had a trust or not.”

1,500 Council staff to be moved to new children's trust

She added: “The judgement was made that the Local Authority did not have the capability to improve.

“Demoralised staff, high levels of staff turnover, impossibly high caseloads and problems between partners gave use the reputation for being a difficult place to work and that the service was broken.

“We also share, in my opinion, some other characteristics which places Bradford in the centre of a perfect storm. A history of ‘improvement tourists’ and consultants, a high turnover of senior staff, a departing Chief Executive and other senior staff, appointments made with little or even no competition, scrutiny arrangements relatively un-changed from when they were implemented over 20 years ago, sycophantic questions being asked of the leader.

“Political oversight done behind closed doors, unclear policy development arrangements and improvements planned, announced but never implemented.

“Budget cuts, workforce instability and the death of Star Hobson all added pressure on-to Children’s Services but participants in the Department for Education research, and our own inspection reports, considered that the problems went beyond Children’s Ser-vices and contributed to the failure.

“In Bradford, despite all of the efforts of front line staff, decline in Children’s Services staff was inevitable.

“Children’s Services in Bradford is the canary in the mine. That is tough. Decline along with the pain and mistrust that went with it, was inevitable: it must not happen again.”

Councillor Sue Duffey, Executive for Children’s and Families, said: “We welcome the creation of the Trust. I don’t think anyone would back away from the difficulties we have in Bradford.

“To move forward we need to support the Trust, and for the Trust to support us.

“The responsibility for Children’s Services doesn’t transfer into the Trust, it stays with us.”

Councillor Geoff Winnard (Cons, Bingley) is Chair of the Council’s Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee – a committee of Councillors that gets regular updates on what was being done to improve Children’s Services.

He said: “Delivery of improvement in Children’s Services appears to have been patchy and uneven, with a worrying lack of consistency.

“As a scrutiny committee we often get reports that accentuate the positives – it is not easy from a scrutiny perspective to gauge how good our improvement plans actually are.”

He said there was often a “reluctance to highlight issues of concerns” at public meetings.

Cllr Sunderland concluded: “I have no doubt that Councillors are going to put them-selves 100 per cent behind the Trust, because we’ve made quite a mess of things so far.”

The leading Labour group put forward an amended motion, that would keep scrutiny arrangements as they are, and promote scrutiny training for members.

It was this amendment that was voted through at Tuesday’s meeting.