Peter Duxbury
The £145,000-a-year head of Birmingham’s children’s services department, Peter Duxbury, has been absent from his desk for two weeks and the city council is refusing to comment on when he might return to work.
Mr Duxbury attended a management board meeting on June 25, but the following day the council issued a press statement confirming that the Strategic Director for Children, Young People and Families was “taking urgent unplanned leave”.
As well as having overall responsibility for children’s social care, Mr Duxbury is also Birmingham’s chief education officer in charge of the city’s schools.
On July 9, council leader Sir Albert Bore was asked about Mr Duxbury at a press briefing.
Sir Albert said: “He is taking leave because of personal matters that he has to resolve. These will be resolved in due course.” The council leader declined to comment further.
Mr Duxbury joined the council in April 2012 and was given the remit of sorting out children’s social services, which have spent four years under government special measures after being declared inadequate by Ofsted.
He was previously head of social services at Lincolnshire where he turned around performance and obtained an ‘outstanding’ rating from inspectors.
Mr Duxbury took over at Birmingham from interim strategic director Eleanor Brazil, who as a consultant was reported to be earning £1,000 a day. She was drafted in for 18 months following the early retirement of former CYPF strategic director Tony Howell.
As a practicing front line social worker with 10 years experience, i can say with confidence that Peter Duxbury did not listen to the voice of the social work staff in the city who are doing the job on a day to day basis.
He had his own vision which did not involve getting to the root cause of why the department is failing our children. Social Workers are overworked, stressed, bogged down with red tape and paperwork and fundamentally have too many cases to be able to safely manage.
Mr Duxbury did not want to hear this (nor have any previous directors) and until the voice of social workers are heard and we are 100% supported to do our jobs effectively, nothing will change. No social worker in this city sets out to do a bad job but sadly the systems in place do not support us or the children and families we serve.
That really is the most ill-informed comment. Duxbury is a buffoon who thinks he can inspire people with group hugs and empty slogans. he has spent an enormous amount of money restructuring only months after Eleanor Brazil spent a fortune restructuring…..
Lets be clear, Duxbury has gone and the personal issues needed to be resolved are presumably his pay-off. Remember Colin Tucker was paid a large sum to go quietly and quickly.
Duxbury came from Lincolnshire which gave him no insight into the issues facing Birmingham. He chose to bring in consultants (his colleagues from Lincolnshire ) who were not advertised for or paid in any transparent manner. They have all gone too.
if you took a straw poll of Childrens Services staff there would be a majority who are glad to see the back of him
Birmingham children’s services wants Peter Duxbury back. This city needs a brave, innovative director like Peter to address the real structural, leadership and beaucratic processes that has held it back. Peter held us to account is this not what the city’s children and families need. Peter provided focus and direction to frontline staff and bringing impower in in the interim is not the solution. Brigid jones is incompetent and has not dealt with CYPF she is not visible or available and needs to step down.
Brum council children’s boss Peter Duxbury still on ‘unplanned’ leave @chamberlainFile