Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales’s recent report on safeguarding children in Powys? (TAQ0054)

Safeguarding children must be the highest priority for public bodies. The CSSIW report raised serious concerns, and I have issued a warning notice to Powys County Council. This was laid before the Assembly yesterday, and I have also published a written statement. I expect rapid improvement, or more direct intervention action will be taken.

I thank the Minister for that response and for the opportunity to be able to discuss these issues with her yesterday. Since the statement of yesterday and my questions to the First Minister, a couple of questions have arisen in Powys’s response to this situation. May I firstly ask, specifically, what steps the Welsh Government is taking or will ensure will be taken to ensure that services will be safe over the ensuing 20 days? I know that you expect to see an action plan within 20 days, but what is being done at the moment, given that the report states that children are at risk in Powys? Therefore, what is going to be done over the next 20 days?

The second point, if I may just ask: last night, in the media, Powys County Council responded to the situation by saying that the figures that they had as regards the management of the services had possibly been faked and that they’d discussed this with the police. Have you any information or knowledge that you could share with the Assembly to say whether these figures and the data are correct and that they’re based on the services? And what other questions does this raise about other services in Powys? If there’s an allegation that the children’s social services data is being manipulated, what does that say about adult and elderly services? In that context, what steps are you taking as a Minister to ensure the security of the wider social services in Powys?

Finally, Powys also publicly declared that addressing this problem would cost them £4 million. Are you happy in your mind that they have adequate resources and funding to do that?

Thank you very much for those questions, and also for the opportunity to bring this issue to the floor of the Assembly today. As you say, safeguarding of vulnerable children has to be the No. 1 priority, and that was certainly my priority when I first was made aware of the situation, and that was through the submission, actually, of a confidential note from the chief inspector of CSSIW, and that really does reflect the seriousness of the inspection report. It’s very unusual, certainly unprecedented in my time in this post, for such an action to be undertaken. So it was certainly a priority then to satisfy myself, even before the report became formally accepted by Powys, that children in Powys were safe, and I required some immediate action to be undertaken. For example, Powys has responded by auditing cases and records and a risk-based assurance programme regarding safeguarding, and they’ve brought in an external company to do that piece of work.

They’ve also increased their staff resources and put in place a leadership and behaviours programme, and all cabinet members are now on the corporate parenting committee. So, they have taken some early steps, but at every step I have sought out reassurances from the chief executive and the leader of the council that, in their view, children in Powys are safe, and they have given me those assurances most recently when I met with them on Friday of last week to give them advance notice of the action we would be taking in terms of the warning notice.

You mentioned the issue that Powys have referred a matter of potential performance management manipulation to the police. I have to tell you that neither I nor CSSIW have had any previous notice of this matter from Powys County Council, so I was disappointed and surprised to have to learn about that from the media. This is a matter for Powys County Council to consider, and, of course, now it is a matter for the police, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment any further on that at this time, but I will say, of course, that we are considering the implications for our published statistics and those that we are due to publish following the announcement yesterday that the police are investigating those potential data manipulation issues in Powys.

In terms of services more widely, I understand that Estyn does have some concerns about education and that Powys is subject to the case conference process that it has. In view of the concerns that I have about children’s services in Powys, I have asked CSSIW to bring forward its inspection of adult social services. It was due for spring of next year, but I’ve asked them to bring it forward, and Powys will receive six weeks’ notice as to when that will take place.

I also understand that Powys County Council have suggested that improvements to children’s services will cost in the region of £4 million, and I do understand that moneys that had previously been taken from the children’s services budget will be restored from the council’s reserves to meet that money.

I would agree with you, Minister, that the CSSIW report on children’s services in Powys is incredibly serious. It’s a damning report and makes uncomfortable reading, and highlights a number of historical failings that have meant that children’s safety and well-being have been jeopardised.

The report raises a number of very serious concerns about Powys County Council’s children’s services department, which the report says has placed children at risk of harm. I note you’ve said today that you’ve had assurances from the chief executive and the leadership of the county council yourself that children are now safe, but can I ask: are you yourself satisfied that children are safe at the present time?

If families who have experienced dealings with the council’s children’s services department have concerns to raise following the report’s publication yesterday, what course of action would you suggest they take? Should they raise this directly with CSSIW, or with Welsh Government directly, or via Assembly Members, or indeed via Powys County Council? If there is a mechanism to report any issues via Powys County Council, would you agree with me that it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to raise concerns via the children’s service itself? The report doesn’t suggest any funding issues or cuts within the service area as a result of its failings, but I do see the report also today in regard to an extra £4 million of funds that have been made available. Can I ask: is there any commitment that the Welsh Government could make in terms of supporting that particular service financially from Welsh Government?

I was also disappointed to hear that the council hadn’t raised with you any discussions it has had with the police. As we’ve seen in reports today, I note that the information reported says that Powys County Council have talked to the police. It doesn’t say that the police are investigating any issue. Can I ask you, Minister, if you would formally make representations to the county council—I shall certainly do it myself as a local Assembly Member, but formally, yourself, as a Minister—to ask the county council what exactly they’re talking to the police about and find out if there is a formal investigation taking place or not? It’s certainly my view that the service should be built up from scratch, and leadership will be crucial in that. Have you any assessment of the experience of the new interim director who has been appointment? Are any arrangements in place to encourage staff who do have concerns to come forward without fear of there being any negative consequence to them? And finally, while the report was very highly critical of the departments of the council’s leadership, it should also be noted that the report has praised the commitment of staff who have shown resilience and professionalism in challenging circumstances—that’s what the report states. Often, comments, of course, are lost when the media report such concerning issues. So, what is your message to those particular staff?

I thank you very much for those questions, and you’re right, the report is very clear that inspectors did note that there was real commitment shown amongst the staff who actually showed some real resilience and professionalism during this period, but serious performance issues did arise and that was, in the view of the report, because of instability in management, poor and confused direction and weak governance. And certainly, when I’ve had discussions with the chief inspector myself, she has been very much at pains to press that point that it was deliberately very clear in the report that, actually, we should be recognising the commitment of the front-line staff who wanted to do a good job, but, however, the structures and the leadership and the governance and so on around them was preventing them from doing the better job that they could have done for the children in Powys.

With regard to the police issue, as I say, I found out about it through the media, just like everybody else, so I’ll certainly be pursuing that to get to the bottom of exactly what the issues are and what the police intend to do about it. Obviously, you wouldn’t expect me to comment any further, being in receipt of very little information on it myself. However, I certainly will be getting to the bottom of the issue.

The improvement board is going to be crucial in terms of driving forward improvement, as you can imagine, and Powys County Council have already convened that improvement board; that was one of the stipulations in the warning notice. I can tell you that the members of the board include Jack Straw, the former chief executive of Swansea, who retired from the council in the local authority in 2016; Phil Hodgson, the former director of social care at Blaenau Gwent; and Geoff Burrows, who, up until May 2017, was a Conservative member of Monmouthshire County Council. And those, alongside Phil Evans, who is the former director of social services at the Vale of Glamorgan, who is now taking over as the interim director of social services for Powys, will be working as a strong team in order to drive forward improvement. And they’ll be reporting back to Welsh Government on a monthly basis as we go through this period, but, as you can imagine, since the concerns were first raised, Welsh Government and the Welsh Local Government Authority have been in very close and constant contact with Powys on these issues.

I understand that those members of that board have already been holding discussions together with CSSIW about the work of the board and what they’ll need to do in terms of moving forward. It really is for Powys County Council to make sure that they provide significant funding to address these issues. As I say, funding had previously been moved out of children’s services, and I understand that money will be found from reserves to reinvest in children’s services to seek to address some of the issues that have been found in the inspection report. Some of these issues don’t require funding, of course. Some of the key issues were a lack of strategic direction and planning and lack of permanence in some of those senior and middle-management roles, a blame culture—. You know, some of these things are about the culture of the workplace and lack of leadership as opposed to necessarily investment and capacity and so on.

I’ve been reading with interest this morning about some of the allegations that have been surrounding the delivery—or the non-delivery, to be exact—of children’s services within Powys. I find it somewhat disconcerting to hear that you, equally, Minister, have found out for the first time by reading things online or listening to the news, in whichever form that arrives. And it seems very clear to me that what has been missing is leadership, management, focus and finance. And unless you have those four constituent elements working together, then nothing is actually going to improve.

But there’s one thing that really, really worries me, and that is that you are talking about identified potential vulnerable children in every single case that we are talking about, and you’re talking about case reviews where those children will have been identified, ranging from low, to medium, to high risk. And we are being informed via the newsreels today that there is a possibility that some of those cases, or some of the information, possibly, surrounding those cases, has been misrepresented—in other words, tampered with. Now, I find that the most concerning thing of all. So, my question, clearly, is: they’re in a mess, there seems to be no doubt about that, that they are absolutely in a mess and you’ve got staff there who have been trying really, really hard, to do their best; it seems clear that there wasn’t a transparent or open or trusted whistleblowing process in place, because those staff would have been telling somebody, somewhere about their concerns, and it was either suppressed or they were too afraid to state it—and I’ve seen this elsewhere in another authority where I used to be a county councillor. And if you’ve got a culture that doesn’t allow things to come out in the open, then that culture needs close examination. So, my question to you is this: they’ve got 20 days to put their bits of paper together, but it won’t be 20 days that will change the culture, so I ask you, Minister, if you will look at the culture so that it isn’t a culture that’s inward-looking, with, maybe, infighting, and that’s of a secretive nature that actually puts these children at risk.

I thank you very much for those points that you’ve made, and certainly the implementation board will be looking very closely at the culture within the organisation and taking on board all of the many comments that have been raised in the inspection report as well. I think it’s important that Powys County Council now looks to seek out peer support and looks for good practice amongst other local authorities that have a good and strong record on children’s services, and also I know that the regional safeguarding board for children in the area is also really keen to offer their advice and support, and the chair, Jake Morgan, director of social services in Carmarthen, has already spoken to the chief executive of Powys to offer his support. So, I would expect the local authority to be looking for, and accepting, strong support from those areas that do have a stronger experience of children’s services.

In terms of the whistleblowing question you raised, I think that is an extremely important one and it’s one that I will commit to looking to see exactly what happened in Powys and I’ll respond to you by letter with some further observations on that.

I thank the Minister.