New director for children’s services in Cornwall

Cornwall Council has appointed a new director to lead services for children, schools and families in Cornwall. Trevor Doughty, who will take up his new role on May 12, is a former social worker with a background in care, particularly relating to children.

He will be responsible for overseeing the departments relating to the care of children, including youngsters taken into care by social services.

His appointment comes six months after the resignation of former head of services Dean Ashton, who stood down shortly before a damning emergency Ofsted report was published, which described many of the areas “inadequate.”

Welcoming the appointment, Alec Robertson, leader of Cornwall Council and Neil Burden, council’s cabinet member for children and schools, said: “This is undoubtedly one of the most important jobs in Cornwall at this time.

“Cornwall Council is committed to providing a high quality service which meets the needs of all children, young people and families in Cornwall. “We have made significant progress in addressing the issues identified in the Ofsted report over the past few months and are currently waiting for our improvement plan to be finally signed off by the Minister.

“We would like to thank Richard Hubbard [interim director] and Kevin Peers who have led this vital piece of work in partnership with Lucy de Groot, the independent chair of our children’s improvement board.

“We now need to implement the improvement plan and build on the progress which has already been made. Trevor’s background in social care and his impressive track record in working with partners to create high quality and effective children’s services make him an ideal person for this job. “This appointment means that there is now a very strong team in place to lead children’s services in Cornwall and we will now be working together to create an excellent service for our children, young people and families.”

Trevor Doughty said: “I am delighted to be joining Cornwall. There is already excellent work going on to improve children’s services and I look forward to playing my part in ensuring that Cornwall has the best possible services for its children and young people and their families.”

Mr Doughty worked for both East Sussex and West Sussex county councils before becoming director of social services at South Tyneside Council in 2000, where he helped transform the service from a ‘poor rating’ to one assessed as serving most people well.

He joined Northumberland county council as its director of children’s services in 2004. The authority had failed its Ofsted inspection the previous year and Mr Doughty successfully joined services to create the one of the first Children’s Trusts in the country. He also developed an improvement plan that led to children’s services being assessed as “good” in 2007, and played a key role in helping the council achieve an “excellent” rating in its comprehensive performance assessment.

He kept his title when Northumberland became a unitary council in 2008, with his role expanding to include all of child community health on behalf of the NHS, as well as extra responsibilities for fire and rescue, community safety and emergency panning. This involved managing a gross budget of £350million and approximately 8,000 staff, including schools.

Northumberland’s children’s services were highly rated in that year’s annual performance assessment, with safeguarding services receiving an “outstanding” score.