PR - Now is the time for review of child death cases to be fully independent

Labour councillors call for review of child death cases to be fully independent.

Swansea Council tonight debated the three recently published Serious Case Reviews into the deaths of young people in their care. The reports have been seriously criticised for taking up to three years to get published and accused of being doctored to remove or tone down significant harder hitting criticisms of the agencies involved.

Speaking after the meeting, Swansea Labour Leader Cllr David Phillips said, “Whilst sincere, apologies, condolences and claims of ‘lessons have been learnt’ sound glib and inadequate in the face of the sad death of young people who died in 2007/8.”

The full Serious Case Review reports are never made public, only the Executive Summary.

Cllr David Phillips said, “It is not acceptable that councillors cannot see the reports themselves and have to take the Summaries on trust. It is not about lack of trust in our officers, it’s about confidence in the system. Confidence, that we have identified what went wrong and that we know what we need to do to put it right. I am not sure that these reports give us that.”

Cllr Phillips said that he had been approached by concerned individuals wanting an independent review of these latest deaths. He said, “I am not convinced of the need for that as yet. However, I am in the process of seeking certain information from Swansea Council and others –I will have to see what that shows.”

He said, “Nonetheless, it is very important that the public have confidence in the system and that cannot have been helped by the considerable delay in publication, by the removal of harder hitting passages and by the fact that the Board is chaired by the Director of Social Service”.

Safeguarding Children’s Boards are routinely chaired by the local Director of Social Service.

Cllr Phillips stressed that this wasn’t about a lack of trust in Swansea’s, Director of Social Service, Chris Maggs. He said, “This is all about the public perception of independence. I welcome the suggestion that such reports should be produced within six months in future. But I would go further, I would suggest it is now time to consider that the whole process should be independent, with an independent chair as well.”Ends

Sent out this evening  after tonights Council meeting. I will be writing more about that tomorrow.