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09/12/09 :Children's Services: Anneliese regrets "Tale of two Councils" as Wokingham judged "performing poorly":
Labour candidate for Reading East Anneliese Dodds has expressed concern that Wokingham Children's Services have been judged by OFSTED to be "performing poorly", with "long-standing poor performance in key areas of social care".
While there have been improvements since Wokingham's Joint Area Review ('JAR') published in January identified safeguarding as inadequate, the OFSTED report states that "there is still much to do. Priority action is required to establish an internal quality assurance system for case work practice. In addition, previously poor assessment of child protection risk has led, in some instances, to premature case closure. The potential safeguarding concerns about these cases have yet to be addressed."
Reading was also judged as inadequate in its JAR, but the Inspectors now state that "the recent unannounced inspection of contact, referral and assessment arrangements identified that prompt and effective action has been taken to tackle the significant weaknesses in safeguarding identified in the JAR."
Anneliese says: "Though Reading had a bad Joint Area Review in January, the Borough already had action plans in place to ensure children were safe, and the Council seems to have managed to pull the service around.
"It is very worrying that, in contrast, OFSTED still has real concerns about safeguarding in Wokingham, which is of course responsible for Woodley, part of the Reading East constituency.
"I hope the Conservatives on Wokingham will put the policies and resources in place to get things right over the coming months."
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