Surrey Fails Vulnerable Children
11 Aug 2008
A Joint Area Review of Surrey and its partners' Children' Services, published by Ofsted this July, highlights shocking failures to keep children safe and to meet the needs of young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.
Lib Dem Spokesperson County Councillor Diana Smith has stated that whilst Surrey County Council boasts that its education service is first class and services to children once they are actually in care are good, if Surrey was a school the Ofsted report should put it into "special measures".
Direct quotations from the main findings of the report are :
- " ... safeguarding is inadequate"
- "there is an inadequate range of services for those children and young people who have a high level of need but who do not meet thresholds for child protection"
- "there are inadequate arrangements to ensure safe staffing"
- "the contribution of local services to improving outcomes for children and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities is inadequate"
- "services to meet health needs are inadequate"
- "Surrey is not on target to halve the rate of teenage pregnancy by 2010 and the overall impact of the strategy is inadequate"
- " ... targeted service delivery for vulnerable groups is inadequate"
- "capacity to improve is inadequate"
Further information is available from County Councillor Colin Taylor or Lib Dem spokesperson Diana Coman.
For the full report, see the link below.