Because Northamptonshire kids deserve better...

A passionate and personal guest post by UNISON Community member Anjona Roy.

"Northamptonshire County Council has had it's third successive "inadequate" grading published. Whilst it's been badged as inadequate, five children have died in County Council care and despite this no serious case review has been published. The last two of the children who died did so during the second "inadequate" Ofsted inspection.

Here is the only news story that has been published about the deaths. Published in March there has been no update on this.

Council staff tell me that they are concerned about the situation with many qualified staff leaving and being replaced with unqualified staff and agency staff.

The Chief Executive of Northamptonshire County Council, Paul Blantern wrote to the children's social care staff on Friday stating:

"...Ofsted have commented positively in their report on many aspects of the work that we are doing:

· We are better at engaging and listening to the voice of the child
· We have strong leadership, both politically and corporately
· There is a vigorous recruitment plan in place, with a commitment to filling vacancies
· Our children’s homes are either good or excellent
· Our decisions on whether or not a child should be in care is appropriate
 
So while we know we are inadequate – and indeed, that was the rating we were expecting - I believe we now have everything in place to start making real improvements.

This is against a background of ongoing challenges in terms of demand on the service. Since the release of the Child Protection inspection report we have had a significant increase in the number of children that we need to provide a service to.

Since March, there has been a 30% increase in referrals to children’s social care, the number of children on child protection plans has increased by 17% and the number of looked after children has increased steadily. The number of children identified as ‘in need’ has increased from 4500 to 5300 – an almost 20% increase."
 
Given the concerns about under-staffing and an over-zealousness to snatch something positive from the from the third inadequate rating in a row it really makes you question whether the reality of the task at hand has hit home.

Heather Smith, Deputy Leader of the County Council, emphatically assures us that the issue had never been about money. The Liberal Democrat leader urges for extra funds out of the budgets from other Council Services to tackle the situation.

Closer scrutiny of the new Children's Social Care Structure shows a high proportion of Senior Practitioner vacancies and those which are vacant occupied by a high proportion of agency staff (some of whom earn over £36 per hour) and some teams having proportions of newly qualified social workers of over 60%.

During budget negotiation, terms and conditions for Northamptonshire County Council staff were altered, making conditions of service in the authority some of the worst in the Country. Whereas every other authority has been recruiting on nationally negotiated pay, terms and conditions, Northamptonshire County Council has been recruiting with the equivalent of one hand tied behind their back with a set of working conditions that no other authority have.

Prospective staff will be right to view offers of employment suspiciously. Other directives have been issued to staff which state that there will be times when they will not be able to complete activity as required by professional standards in their contracted time and this will have to be undertaken outside their contracted hours. Essentially working for free. Is this really the way to get the best people to pull the service out of this hole?

Thirteen years ago in the same authority a child went missing in Council care (Sarah Benford) and there was nationwide publicity about this.

Now that five children have died and it seems that no one wants to know. I've been in contact with three different press representatives over the course of today and it does seem that those five children are dead and forgotten. With the clamour for no increases in Council Tax it really does seem that the children simply don't matter. Is this because we don't care any more about this? Or is it that whilst they remain faceless and nameless, it's OK not to care. Whilst the serious case reviews are not published ... that's the way it'll stay.

Over the weekend I suggested that people who did care and wanted to show that they care could perhaps make a statement ... perhaps through twitter using the hashtag

#telltheirstories #ifyoucanttelltheirname

Take a stand - Defend equality

Over the course of time we get used to it.

(Guest Post) “It” being a methodical onslaught on privileges (such as free comprehensive health care), freedoms (such as the freedom to live with the ones you love where ever they may come from in the world even if you earn less than £18,600 per year) and our rights.

Sometime last year the Government issued their now (in?) famous “Red Tape Challenge”. As part of this, one of the proposals was to repeal the Equality act 2010.

This suggestion prompted a deluge of responses from across the Country to leave the act alone. The act was brought in at the end of the last Labour Government after a tortuous amount of consultation and involvement stretching over years.

The new coalition government in their infinite wisdom started swiftly to make the changes by simply failing to implement sections of the Act (protection over Dual discrimination) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/equalities/equality-act/faq/ and watering it down where they could (the move away for the requirement to equality impact assess policy changes to simply paying “due regard” to equality).

However on the 15th May this year, it seems clear that it was time to focus on our rights. Issuing a double whammy of two sets of consultations on repealing two sections of the equality act, removing equality act questionnaires and reconsidering and reviewing the Public Sector Equality Duty the proposals have explicit intention to scream out:

· Tribunals have no place in preventing future discrimination

· People making allegations of discrimination have no place demanding that they should be protected from harassment

· People making allegations of discrimination have no business asking for answers from their respondents before their day in court

· The Public Sector Equality Duty has no place in making sure that unfair and discriminatory decisions don’t take place.

The organisation I work for has set up a website for people in Northamptonshire to respond to the proposals here [http://defendequality.co.uk] but if you live outside Northamptonshire you can learn more about the proposals and find a suggested set of words to complain to the Government Equalities Office on both enforcement@geo.gsi.gov.uk and thirdpartyharassment@geo.gsi.gov.uk

Don’t forget to write to your local MP. You have until 7th August 2012 to take action. If you don’t ... you very well might regret it.

(Guest post by Anjona Roy: photo Kelly)

When the going gets tough the discrimination starts flowing...”

Guest Post by Anjona Roy from UNISON Northampshire Country branch.

"For the past six years I have worked for Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council, a small local charity that provides advice and representation to victims of discrimination. In the last few months, I like many others in local community and voluntary organisations have been trying to bring in as much funding as possible in order that our services still exist after this month for the coming financial year.

With young people, families and pensioners facing a tougher and tougher future in Con-Dem Britain, the need to easily accessible, accurate and timely advice is greater than ever. The bed rock of community based advice provision has always been the citizens advice movement. Often the advice consists of signposting and it is relatively infrequent that the advice involves ongoing casework. These organisations are supported with a national infrastructure and the majority of work that they pick up tends to be fixing errors and screw ups by social housing, the benefits agency and benefits sections of local government. The mainstream community and voluntary advice sector thus spends significant proportions of its resources in helping public services deliver to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. It’s a really good argument for the need of government and local authorities to invest in advice. However, the argument doesn’t translate when you start discussing discrimination advice.

Despite the fact that our organisation has been delivering discrimination advice for the past thirty years, discussions with local authorities in our area clearly indicate that supporting individuals when they experience discrimination, isn’t what they want to invest in. They would rather things not get that far. They would rather that local businesses, local services did not discriminate and then no formal action, no challenge, would ever have to be endured. This all comes from a view of the world that people don’t generally act unfairly or want to act in a way that is unfair and that most of the time when discrimination happens it is due to misunderstanding and the services and employers just need that little bit of extra assistance to ensure that their equality practice is positive and legally compliant. A view echoed by the Government Equalities Office review of the Equality and Human Rights Commission last year.

Tell that to victims of discrimination and see what the response is. Tell that to the catering manager who was told by her supervisor “If you were my dog I would have you put down”, who was told that she was made redundant and then later saw her own job being advertised on the company website. Tell that to the Eastern European baker who’s manager told her that he “only employed Polish idiots”.
When the going gets tough the discrimination starts flowing and most of the time it has little to do with mis-understanding. It has more to do with the abuse of service delivery or employment relationships in a context of a basic lack of respect for human beings and their rights to fairness. This is very far removed from getting the delivery of public services to work well and this approach has very high levels of expectation from organisations that government still view as needing to publically demonstrate commitment to the general duty requiring:

Eliminat[ion of] unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
Advance[ment] equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
Foster[ing] good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

If this was so easy, then why require the general duty under the Equality act 2011. There’s also a requirement to “publish information demonstrating compliance with the general duty under the equality act” by 31st January 2012. From a quick scan of the public bodies operating where I live only 20% have complied with this requirement and even those that have reported, haven’t all reported on both workforce and the delivery of services. So much for the positive hearts and minds of those responsible for the delivery of public bodies and their commitment to comply with legal requirements. 

The truth is that when it comes to equality, the growth in capacity has been the in the knowledge of how to discriminate and not leave tracks to enable action to be taken by a complainant. In the current economic climate there has been an exponential growth in employers offering contracts with working hours being detailed as 0-37 hours per week. With this kind of a contract unless there is an out and out admission that discrimination is taking place employers are quite within their rights to no longer offer work to the woman who has just found out that she is pregnant or the disabled worker who’s role had changed and requires an additional reasonable adjustment. The truth is that discrimination is about whether one group of people matter more than another and how many of us are willing to stand up and be counted when the chips are down.
If you are one of those who want to stand up and be counted please sign the petition on this link. 
You can also join the sounds off for justice campaign and try and protect access to legal aid here
and join the Justice for All campaign to protect free local legal advice.