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Doncaster Council’s director of children’s services says “No excuses, we need to do better”
Chris Pratt, the director of DMBC's Children and Young Person's Service. Picture: Liz Mockler D8089LM
DIRECTOR of Children Services at Doncaster Council says the department needs to act quickly after a government report he describes as “hard-hitting and critical”.
Chris Pratt says the troubled department needs to act fast after Ofsted inspectors called the service “inadequate”, echoing the horrors of the shocking reports of four years ago.
A report by Lord Carlile, which focuses on the attacks on two boys in Edlington, has also brought the authority’s record for failing children’s services under fire once again.
Speaking to the Free Press, Mr Pratt said: “It is clear that we have not yet fully recovered the systematically broken services that we previously had, and as Ofsted says, features of that systematic failure remain today.”
He also outlined some of his plans for improvement in the wake of the two reports which were made public today:
• Plans to bring in external expertise, including a principal social worker who would be dedicated to upholding professional standards
• External input required on recruitment and retention to get more stability in social workers
• Introduce four smaller family support teams, rather than three larger ones
• Plans to reduce caseloads and protect caseloads for newly-qualified social workers
• Work with the private sector and with other authorities to improve safeguarding children record
• Reduce the number of children in expensive external placements
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Weather for Doncaster
Thursday 23 May 2013
Today
Light showers
Temperature: 5 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North west
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Light showers
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