Press pick up on social services deaths

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, we see that today’s Western Mail carries further information on the long-overdue reports into the deaths of three youngsters whilst under the care of Swansea social services. These are scheduled to be published next Friday (19^th March).

As the paper points out, the local authority already holds the dubious accolade of being the first in Wales to have a children’s services department placed under special measures by the Assembly Government– known officially as “serious concerns protocol”.

The Evening Post mentions that deputy minister Gwenda Thomas is expected to announce the results of a recent CSSIW inspection of the department on Tuesday, March 23 which the authority has been hinting shows improvements. But the cynicism of the timing and the highly critical nature of the three case reviews is likely to overshadow any plus points the Lib Dem-controlled council were thinking of claiming.

Surprisingly, neither paper has a comment to make on the highly questionable decision to lump the three review reports together nor is there speculation on the reasons behind the delay. However, the EP does manage to highlight the fact that the Swansea Safeguarding Children Board, who have the responsibility for publishing the reports, happens to be chaired by the person responsible for managing the city’s social services department.

The biggest discordant note comes from council leader Chris Holley who only manages to comment that "We are anxious to see what learning points there are from these reviews". The inference being that he has no inking about the contents, including one which details how a youth was allowed to virtually drop out of the care system and was not picked up again by the department despite a series of urgent referrals from a range of agencies.

As mentioned when news first began to leak, the probability of him and senior colleagues not even being briefed by officials on the damaging nature of the reports is a remote one to say the least. But if it does turn out to be true that such key information was deliberately withheld from the political head of the authority then comments by readers of this blog calling for an full independent public enquiry are clearly warranted.