Birmingham’s children’s social care director warns of challenges facing social workers

Birmingham’s director of children’s social care Colin Tucker, has laid out the extent of the challenges facing his team at the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) annual conference.

He told delegates that his authority, which was served with an improvement notice last year, has a “bad and depressing” track record of supporting social workers.

“I don’t think social workers have been well understood,” he said. “We haven’t been clear about their role, we haven’t supported them as well as we could and other agencies have been able to get away with their practice not being up to standard through the fact that my staff have performed a residual function and been blamed for just about everything to do with child deaths.”

Tucker said his team is on a “journey of improvement”, but warned that they face a “phenomenal task”, in a city with 2,000 looked-after children, 1,300 children with child protection plans and more than 2,000 assessments every month.

He described the Aston branch of his department as “the most difficult office for social work in Europe” and warned that “an exodus of experienced staff” is compounding problems.

To turn the situation around, Tucker said the council is embarking on a programme of improvement, moving staff into new buildings, working with universities that provide social work training and improving professional development. Its social care budget is also protected this year, to make sure there is sustained investment in the service.

He added that an ITN film crew would be filming his children and families social workers for two weeks, to show the public what social workers really do, following the high profile case of Khyra Ishaq, who was starved to death by her family.