THE independent advisor responsible for the oversight of BCP Council’s children’s services admitted there are no quick solutions to getting the department back on track.

John Coughlan said the local authority’s inadequate Ofsted rating was very damaging and public concern was legitimate.

Mr Coughlan, who was appointed by the Department for Education following the watchdog’s findings earlier this year, said the council needs to work with partner agencies to deliver the required improvements.

He told the Daily Echo: “You cannot avoid the fact that the kind of judgement that BCP Council has had is a very damaging thing and requires a lot of very careful, skilled work to move forward from.

“There are no simple quick solutions I am afraid but so far I am of the view that this work can be done and can be done constructively and positively. I am optimistic for BCP Council’s future but it is going to require a lot of very, very hard work by everybody concerned.”

The former director of Hampshire County Council’s children’s services has the role of improvement advisor, which sees him chair the improvement board and work with a team of colleagues from Hampshire on “assessment and diagnostics.

Mr Coughlan said this involved “getting under the skin of the authority” and “opening up the bonnet” to try and understand more about why things have gone wrong, why they stayed problematic and working with BCP Council about the long-term fixes.

“It is important to understand the fixes are very hard to achieve in fairness because it is complicated services with a lot of challenges around them but there is a big issue among making sure you can get the fixes to stick,” Mr Coughlan said.

“So there is one thing achieving the improvement but there is another thing making the improvement remain.

“We will have a target date around two years from now when Ofsted will return for a full inspection again.”

Mr Coughlan said there were issues had been found around stability in staffing and stability in management.

Since the Ofsted inspection, which took place late last year and had findings published in February, BCP Council has appointed Cathi Hadley as director of children’s services and she is in the process of bringing a management team together.

Discussing the Ofsted report, Mr Coughlan said: “Public concern is legitimate – that is what the Ofsted framework is for. To ensure that services for the most vulnerable children can be as strong as they possibly can be.

“What I would say is without making any excuses, because my job is the opposite of making excuses for authorities in BCP Council’s position, but firstly these are really complicated services – they just are. The legislation around them is really difficult.

“Having skilled social workers who understand their job well and are well managed is a big challenge in the best of circumstances.

“You can see some of the issues that sit within BCP Council which are around a number of failing authorities and when they lose managerial continuity for whatever reason and then there be internal changes or disruption which have happened which need to be got over properly.”

Mr Coughlan said the councils merger had been a big change. He said whether children’s services had coped well enough and been helped to cope well enough with this transition had to be thought about “more carefully”.

Asked if children in the BCP Council area had been failed, he said: “You can’t get out from under the fact that the Ofsted report is an inadequate judgement and that is the way it is and that is primarily a corporate responsibility for the local authority but it also reflects on the statutory partners, particularly health and police.

“They have got to work together to get the improvement. One of the tricks, if I may use that word, for the kind of work we are involved in now is not to point fingers of blame and everyone wants to point a finger of blame. I just don’t think that is particularly helpful.

“We do have to look really carefully at what went wrong and why, in order that we stop it going wrong in the future.

“This isn’t a softly, softly exercise. It is a tough exercise about understanding what went wrong and why in order that we can fix it.”

Bournemouth Echo: John Coughlan has previously worked as director of children's services and then chief exective at Hampshire County CouncilJohn Coughlan has previously worked as director of children's services and then chief exective at Hampshire County Council

He added: “It is all about creating the right conditions so that good people, who want to do a good job, because everybody wants to do a good job, so that those good people can get their job done properly and that is the focus of what we are doing.

“We have to learn from the past, but we are much more about thinking for the future.”

In the past couple of years national focus has been put on children’s services after the tragic deaths of five-year-old Logan Mwangi in Wales, 16-month-old Star Hobson in West Yorkshire and six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes in the West Midlands.

Mr Coughlan said: “We all see those cases and they are appalling cases when they happen. Invariable those cases are more likely to happen in areas where the systems and services are not functioning properly.

“Thankfully there hasn’t been that kind of case in the BCP Council area and hopefully we will work effectively together to prevent that from happening.

“The sad fact about children’s services and children being harmed is that you can never have absolute protection. It is just not possible.

“That kind of case can happen sometimes sadly in the best run authorities.”

The former Hampshire County Council chief executive said there are very strong professionals working in BCP Council who are the ones that stop bad cases happening.

“You never get the reports of the children that have been saved from that kind of thing, which is just the way of the world,” Mr Coughlan said.

“Undoubtedly really good work has stopped that happening in BCP but what we know from the Ofsted judgements and we are seeing evidence of that in the work we are doing so far, is that we need to do more to reduce that risk for the future and that is why we are doing what we are doing.

“I don’t blame you for raising that concern because it is right that the nation should be worried about children in those circumstances and yes these services are designed to try to stop those things from happening.

“I am of the view that sadly you can never guarantee that those cases won’t happen, but certainly the work we are doing with BCP Council is especially intended to reduce the likelihood.”