I’m still here - 19 July
Can it really be the 19th July? More than a week since my last post?
There have been a number of meetings during the last couple of weeks - SACRE (Standing advisory Council on Religious Education); a visit to Sheerwater Youth Centre as part of the current consultation on Youth Services; and the Children and Families Committee. Then there have been Arts activities - visiting Woking Youth Arts Centre to see their production about teenage pregnancy; a Harp Ensemble rehearsal, and then a concert at Emsworth, on the South Coast, which took an (enjoyable) day out of last weekend. Not to mention a brief time sitting at the Woking Writers Circle stall as part of the Arts Council event on Saturday 12th.
Behind the scenes there’s been some intense politics going on. The CA / JAR (Corporate Assessment and Joint Area Review) reports will be published this Tuesday, the 22nd of July. The JAR concentrates on services for Children, and homed in on some specific areas related to social services for children.
You may have learned something of it in advance from the report in the Surrey Advertiser, which talks about problems with CRB checks, so a certain amount of information has been leaked to the press. Some information has also reached Councillors, but of course I can’t write about the private briefings we have received. Enough has been said in public, both in the paper and on this web site, to give you the clue that there may be interesting things to be said on Tuesday.
But ordinary Councillors - and opposition Councillors, as I am - have had not one direct quotation from the report itself, and absolutely no information about the inspectors’ ratings. (And not for lack of asking)
There are clues. We do know that we now have a new Interim Head of Childrens Services and a new Interim Head of Safeguarding. The draft Jar report was with the various organisations being inspected in May, and the PCT made public its initial action plan on the 9th of May. And as I’ve reported on this website remarks have been made openly in the Children and Families Committee that are interesting in this context.
It happens that there is a Full Council meeting this coming Tuesday the 22 July, the day the report is published. After that meeting we’re practically into the summer break, so the next Full Council meeting will be in October.
The present plan is that the (Conservative) Leader will make a statement on the 22nd July. At first I was told that Surrey would not make the reports available to us until then, and anticipated a midnight stint trying to download them from the Ofsted and the Audit Office webites, assuming the IT departments concerned put them up that early - which I discovered through telephoning Ofsted was not guaranteed. The situation now is that Councillors will be supplied with printed copies of the reports and a briefings on them - so that we know what Surrey would like us to say to residents and the press - by 9.00 am, with with meeting starting at 10.30 am.
Please excuse me going on about this a bit, when it is the content of the reports that are what really matters, and which must be taken most seriously. But how can we do our job of opposition effectively when the Conservative Executive have had months to stock up on wallpaper and paste to cover the cracks, and we will have an hour and a half to go through the reports to find the information we need in order to make sure our residents get more than a one-sided view from their Council?
July 21st, 2008 at 8:34 am
Dear Ms Smith,
Your blog suggests that the Council has deliberately witheld the information from councillors,
and you specifically quote the lack of information on the actual ratings themselves.
This is incorrect and not the council’s decision - all councillors were informed that the report is
subject to strict embargo by Ofsted, who have said specifically that we are unable to quote
from the report or reveal the judgements until July 22.
This is why officers have been offering private briefings to councillors and other
agencies, and I can reassure you that once this embargo is lifted we have thorough plans
to communicate the results publicly.
Matt Burrows
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Maybe the word ‘embargo’ needs clarification - Does it not mean that the information must not get into the public domain, rather than that it cannot be communicated to anyone at all?
An Action Plan has already been approved by the Executive. How did this happen if the report’s findings were not known?
Senior Officers’ approaches to briefings suggested to me that they knew the findings - they did not claim ignorance, only that the ‘embargo’ prevented them from saying what the findings were even when asked directly by a member of the relevant committee.
The Executive Member for Children and Families said in Council today that she did not know the findings - she also said that the briefings had to have the words changed from the report because of the ‘embargo’. It’s possible she was told about this limitation, of course, but it sounded like a contradiction of her earlier statement.
There may be ambiguity around the differences between a draft report and the final report, and about the meaning of the word ‘know’.
I would like to understand the sequence of events, what the exact limitations have been, and exactly what the Executive’s claims to ignorance mean. If I have misunderstood, I am not the only person to have done so.
I do not want readers to be misled, any more than I want to be misled myself - if Matt Burrows would like to explain further here, I would be glad to read the explanation and allow others to do so as well.