An urgent UNISON meeting for Children’s Social Care areas

Ofsted Report 2018 + Workload + Performance = Misconduct?

UNISON meeting 17^th May  2pm

Dear CSC member

We now know the outcome and details of Ofsted report 2018, (held back until after the May elections) and that Lambeth Children’s Services have moved out of an “inadequate” rating to an overall rating of “requires improvement to be good” and there has therefore been some real progress on the improvement journey. However some areas within the report are still deemed inadequate and incidentally – Leadership, Management & Governance (.3) still Requires Improvement!

Unfortunately in the run up to the report UNISON have also noticed a recent rise of Social Work staff being placed under formal capability procedures (sometimes without being informed they were already at the “informal” stage) but more alarmingly Social Work staff also being placed under “Disciplinary Investigation” for “Misconduct” issues linked to capability procedures and performance issues.

UNISON are clear that Social Workers, who have often had very high case-loads during a very difficult transitional period for Lambeth CSC, should not be penalised for so called ‘capability’ issues to do with their work and especially not threatened with disciplinary action for misconduct (for historic management failings which were originally identified in the 2015 Ofsted report).

If you would like to discuss the Ofsted report and Lambeth’s response as well as other Children’s Social Care issues, then please come to the next CSC UNISON meeting:

Thursday 17 May 2018: Civic Centre (CC05 -02)  2pm

Agenda:

• Ofsted Report and our response to Lambeth’s response
• Workloads, Capability Procedures, Investigations for Misconduct
• Your New Town Hall and Civic Centre
• Health & Safety
• AOB

Yours in Solidarity,

Andy Tullis; UNISON Convenor Children’s Social Care

16/05/2015