Mystery surrounds absence of Birmingham children’s boss Peter Duxbury
Numerous senior and middle management changes have occurred over the past three years in an effort to lift children’s services out of special measures, but many in the council are resigned to at least another year under the critical eye of Whitehall and an improvement board.
In May 2011, the director of children’s service, Colin Tucker, left the council after the local authority said improvements were not being made quickly enough. Mr Tucker joined from Sandwell Council and was also given the task of turning children’s social care around.
The department was initially rated as failing in 2009 following a series of deaths of children on the books of social workers, most notably seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq from Handsworth who died of starvation at the hands of her mother and stepfather.
It was confirmed in April this year that services for safeguarding children in Birmingham are still not meeting 24 out of 41 targets set by an improvement board.
In May, Chamberlain News revealed that only 43 per cent of initial assessments of vulnerable children were being carried out by social workers within the required timescale, down from the mid-60s per cent for most of 2012-13. The national average is 77 per cent.
