Independent reports highlights flaws in social services

Last night we held a special Scrutiny Meeting to consider the findings of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of an 84 year old woman.

Southwark's Coroner had demanded the report to find out why, despite many calls from worried neighbours, Southwark Council had failed to send a social worker round to visit Mrs Lambet to if she needed help. By the time the Council got round to even calling the lady she had already passed away.

The report quite fairly points out that there is no certainty that if the council had sent someone round it would have made a difference. However it does say that it was an error of judgement not to go and picks up a number of weaknesses in the system which the council needs to learn from. The ones I found most concerning were:

1 A lack of proper procedures for deciding when an urgent visit was needed and how to respond to multiple calls from neighbours
2 That the duty social work team carries out a wide range of work in addition to responding new and urgent cases which "may distract from the core responsibility of a duty team to focus on managing the risks in new referrals"
3 That the staff who were answering the calls from the neighbours were all temps without proper training in responding to emergency calls
4 That there is a huge shortage of applicants for jobs in social care and social services

The report calls for an action plan to address some specific recommendations and a full review of the operation of the duty team. Following my suggestion the Health & Social Care Scrutiny Committee will monitor this follow up work to make sure the council learns the lessons from this case.

On the whole I thought it was a useful and contructive meeting and I'm hopeful that this will be a catalyst for improvement in the service.

The one thing that did disappoint me was that the LibDem members of the committee kept on and on pressing the point that it might not have made a difference if the council had sent someone round. This is true, but it is no excuse for the council not sending someone and it's important that it doesn't happen again. If they'd asked one question along these lines then I'd have understood, but again and again they sought to find ways to suggest other people were to blame, that the council hadn't really done anything seriously wrong and that it was all being blown out of proportion.

I realise this kind of denial and defensiveness is pretty common in ruling parties (I dare say some Labour MPs and Labour cllrs in other areas are just as guilty), but it really isn't healthy for the council and I hope that the Southwark LibDems will grow out of it.