Balls ‘Was Irresponsible’ To Promise Baby P Case Will Not Happen Again

Council chiefs today accuse the children’s secretary, Ed Balls, of being “irresponsible” in his response to the death of Baby P, saying that his “political promises” to prevent a repeat of the tragedy could never be fulfilled.

The head of the group representing chief executives of local authorities said there was no evidence to back up accusations made by Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector of schools, that Haringey council, in the north London borough where Baby P died, had misled inspectors by providing false data.

Derek Myers, chairman of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), also suggested that the warped result of Haringey’s 2007 area performance inspection, which labelled it “good” just weeks after the child’s death, could in fact have been the product of the pressures of Ofsted’s systems.

Gilbert, the chief inspector at Ofsted, has acknowledged flaws in the system of APAs, a largely paper-based evaluation of children’s services, which meant that they failed to pick up on problems in Haringey. Balls said yesterday that he was “glad” that this year’s APAs, due to be published next week, would be the last before the system is replaced with more rigorous inspections.

He has ordered Lord Laming to review the children’s services reforms he designed after the death of Victoria Climbié, also in Haringey. In a submission to that review, seen by the Guardian, Solace writes: “We believe that political promises that exhort that ‘such deaths or severe traumas must never happen again’ are irresponsible and serve to obscure a more fundamental debate about the fundamental rights of children and parents.

“In our view good people making good judgments in good systems can still not be enough to prevent some parents harming or killing their children.” Myers confirmed Solace was attributing those promises to Balls.

The submission also warns against APAs, saying they have been “raised to an importance that they are unsuited to”, with reputations riding on the tiniest differences in data used to measure the performance of children’s services.

Myers said: “Ofsted say that the way Haringey used recording systems misled them. I can’t argue with that opinion. But you can’t draw an inference that that was deliberate by Haringey and it may be a product of the inadequacy of the system.”

He added: “If you have a top-down, very demanding inspection system then it is inevitable that you will get an inhibition about people close to frontline. They may not tell senior managers important things that they may be able to do something about if they know about them.”

Ofsted’s accusations against Haringey have come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that Ofsted destroys all inspection material three months after a report is published, so there is no proof of the figures.

Balls yesterday insisted he still had “full confidence” in Ofsted. However, he said he was “pleased” that the watchdog was scrapping paper-based reviews of children’s services. He added the watchdog had a record of being “robust, competent and thorough”.

Balls also announced the creation of a taskforce to look at every aspect of social work. The taskforce is charged with raising the status of social workers to make them a profession as respected as teachers.