Leeds’ children’s services has refused to comment on claims social workers have filed a formal grievance over high workloads.
Senior figures in charge of the council department said they would not be drawn on “confidential HR matters”, when asked whether or not they’d received a grievance at a scrutiny meeting on Wednesday morning. Conservative councillor Ryan Stephenson, who raised the issue at the meeting, criticised that response, later tweeting that getting an answer was “in the public interest”.
Unite, the trade union that represents social workers on the council, has been contacted for comment.
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The council’s portfolio holder for children and young people also furiously denied Councillor Stephenson’s subsequent claim that there was a “cover-up” within the service. Councillor Fiona Venner pointed to Ofsted’s recent rating of Leeds’ children’s services as ‘outstanding’, which is extremely rare among local authorities, as evidence of good practice.
Speaking at the meeting, Councillor Stephenson suggested frontline social workers were handling an average of 40 caseloads each.
Members of the scrutiny panel had earlier been told the number was 21, though Councillor Stephenson suggested that number was skewed by advance practitioners within the department, who generally handle fewer cases.
Asked about the 40 figure specifically, Julie Longworth, the council’s deputy director for children and families, said: “That’s not my understanding.
“But what we have said and what we’ve acknowledged with Ofsted is that in some cases the caseloads for social workers are not where we want them to be and that’s a national challenge. It’s a challenge that’s being faced by every local authority.”
Councillor Stephenson then asked: “Can you confirm that there’s a live grievance that you’ve received regarding caseloads, and that part of that grievance is that frontline social workers are concerned they can’t ensure safeguarding of children in the city, because of the high numbers of caseloads?”
Ms Longworth replied: “We wouldn’t comment in a public forum such as this around any individual grievances such as this. That’s not what we’d do.”
When Councillor Stephenson repeated the question, Councillor Venner said: “Julie has been very clear here that it’s not appropriate to comment on confidential HR maters and we won’t comment further,” before adding that the scrutiny board chair could be “briefed in private” over issues happening within the service.
Councillor Stephenson replied: “I’ve not asked for any individual HR information.
“I’ve asked a very simple question around whether employees of this council have raised concerns with the leaders here and if the leaders aren’t prepared to tell us there are concerns being raised, how are we meant to scrutinise the actions of the leaders?
“I’d like some legal advice at some point please around the role of scrutiny and how we get this information to stop the cover-ups.”
At that point, a furious Councillor Venner interjected, “That is really inappropriate. It is not a cover up! I’d just remind you we’ve had our regulator crawling all over us for a very intensive three-week inspection in which we were found to be an outstanding authority for children’s services.
“It’s not a cover-up. I’ve said we’ll talk privately to the chair and we’ll discuss with him the most appropriate way of involving scrutiny, but we’re not at this meeting going to comment on what is a confidential HR matter.”
In its report on Leeds’ children’s services, published in May, Ofsted said that caseloads had been driven up by a rise in referrals at a time of “increased staff sickness and vacancy levels”.
However, it said that the “quality of core social work practice remains exceptionally high and thorough.” The service was rated ‘outstanding’ on three of the four separate criteria used by inspectors to deliver their judgment.
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