Smoking Mirror

So the Balls review has been published.

And rather surprisingly it was not the whitewash that I expected.

The papers are full of the story that following this review Sharon Shoesmith has been suspended on full pay (as are Clive Preece and Cecilia Hitchen) by order of Mr Balls, and councillors Meehan and Santry have resigned - though curiously the Harringey council website still describes them by the positions they resigned from - and it should be made perfectly clear that both of them remain as councillors.

Whilst the review is not a whitewash, it is odd that it is not specifically a review of the way the Baby Peter case was handled either.

Instead it is a critique of the way in which the 'professionals' in Harringey behaved in a manner bordering on the criminal.

It is very difficult to describe what is alleged in this report as anything other than criminal.

For instance:

"44. Social care service management data collected by the council are unreliable. The performance indicator data regarding timeliness of initial and core assessments suggest that this is good. However, a number of files seen during the inspection show that the assessments are ‘counted’ as complete although the documentation is incomplete on file. In addition, cases of families with more than one child do not always have separate files opened for siblings. This means that the true number of children allocated to a social worker is not accurately counted. Cases identified for closure are not always closed promptly."

Which is a polite way of saying that Harringey social services had accounting practices akin to Enron.

The review also raises serious questions about Ofsted, and it's value as an inspectorate.

I mentioned previously that the Ofsted report of 2004 found that only 2.8% of posts remained unfilled. Yet the review offers a different way to look at the staffing levels in the social work department:

"50. The high turnover of qualified social workers in some social care teams has resulted in heavy reliance on agency staff, who make up 51 of 121 established social worker posts. This results in lack of continuity for children and their families and of care planning. Action has been taken to attract staff, including an increase in pay scales and a graduate trainee scheme. Currently there are four unfilled social work posts."

This poses very serious questions for government policy. Because the 2004 Ofsted report puts staff turnover at 12.8& of staff 'directly employed by Harringey', but notes that this is below average for similar authorities. Yet this assessment appears to only look at something like half of the work force, and would seem to ignore the turnover of agency staff. Which makes this figure as stoopid and pointless as the target to remove children form the at risk register.

But let's not get fixated on the social services department - as the MSM have - because the review is as scathing about the police and the health department. Indeed reading through -what in other circumstances - would be fairly called a comedy of errors, it is difficult to see how anyone can have any faith in any public services - lack of accountability, responsibility, failure to keep accurate and legible records, and far from the popular view of too many people attending too many meetings, it would seem that people were spending their time avoiding meetings where ever possible - indeed it might be argued that the problems lay in a similar attitude to work in general.

Yet despite Mr Balls' making all the right noises, Labour are still on a political hook. Because a new serious case review is to be delivered in February 2009, as the previous one drawn up under the auspices of Sharon Smithsmith as been judged thoroughly untrustworthy and partial.

Yet this is the very report that Gordon Brown waved around at PMQs and stated would form the basis of 'learning lessons'. And had David Cameron not shamed the government into launching this review, that first report would still be Gordon Brown's prefered instructional manual for child protection.

And what does that say about Gordon's political judgement, and integrity?

peace:)