850 Children in Birmingham lack Social Work support

Posted on September 2nd, 2010

Community care this week revealed that Birmingham City Council does not have a qualified Social Worker allocated to a quarter of its children in need. 852 children under the Local Authority’s jurisdiction are unallocated, along with 232 looked after children also unallocated to a Social Worker.
Philip Measures, a retired front line Social Worker uncovered the information, “It’s absolutely criminal. You just can’t have cases unallocated like that,” said Measures. “The local authority is supposed to be the corporate parent and yet no one is accepting responsibility. Birmingham has had a succession of high profile child abuse inquiries – Khyra Ishaq being one of the latest – and still there is no national initiative to put right the severe ills.”
Chris Cooper, children’s services representative for Birmingham Unison added to the City Council’s woes by revealing that one third of new cases coming out of Social Work duty and assessment teams are being passed on to Family Support Workers or Senior Social Work Assistants. Cooper said, “It’s a very scary idea, but it’s better than having nobody working the case at all. It’s very unfortunate, but I think it’s inevitable until vacancy levels come down.”
The Department for Education is very direct when it comes to unallocated child care cases. “Local authorities have a legal duty to allocate a Social Worker to every looked after child and they should be providing all vulnerable children with support to address their needs. The statistics relating to Birmingham’s provision for children in care are worrying” a spokesperson said.
Community Care’s research also found that Birmingham had 16% of its Social Work posts vacant, making the average caseload between 24 and 25.

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