Corruption in Derby City Council

October Update

2006-10-17T22:26:00.000Z

Nothing much to report. Derby City Council has not responded satisfactorily to my letter of late August 2006. Neither have the councillors ... I intend to take further action shortly, so watch this space!

Further Updates

2006-09-02T14:33:00.000Z

I now have an open letter about my case published, giving a much fuller version of the problems that I have encountered in Derby City Council. To read the letter click here.

Failure to Follow Procedure in Assessing my Application

2006-08-08T16:02:00.000Z

In July 2004 the former Social Services (now Children and Young People’s Services) connected to Derby City Council informed me that they would not proceed any further with my application to become a foster carer of children in care.

I have repeatedly asked the former Social Services for the reasons that my application was turned down but they have given no consistent explanation.

Currently 10,000 more foster carers are needed, according to one fostering organisation. Indeed, in a story published on May the 25th 2006 it is stated that Derby City Council “currently needs to find 40 new foster carers”, partly to prevent cared for children from having to go into children’s homes or to foster carers outside Derby. My reasons for applying remain unchanged: there is a need, and I think I could help to meet it. I pursued the matter because this need has not gone away.

Two social workers from Derby City Council left me part of a photocopied booklet entitled Becoming a foster carer: An applicant’s guide to the assessment process (put out by the Fostering Network). This booklet explains that there are fourteen areas of competence. These are outlined in the extensive reference questionnaires that referees fill in. The booklet goes on to say that we “do not need to be equally able in every area”, and that the job of the social worker allocated to prospective carers is to help them to “recognise the skills you already have, and work with you in developing new ones”, both now and after being approved to foster. They evidently do not expect applicants to have perfect references; there are issues to be dealt with, and that is why they train us. We are not expected to have all the necessary skills at the beginning of the training process.

When applying for a job, people get turned down because although their qualifications are good, somebody else’s are better. But in the case of foster carers, the agencies need all the people they can get, so long as they are suitable after training. They do not turn people down because they do not want to train them, as might happen in the case of applying for normal paid work. With fostering, candidates get assessed for six months, and they are trained in that time … and continue to be trained after the applicant has become a foster carer.

Additionally, the booklet Becoming a foster carer: An applicant’s guide to the assessment process says that if our application is turned down then we should discuss with the social worker the reasons for this. The same document also advises that if we are interested in reapplying then the assessment panel may have made a recommendation about something we need to do to make them more favourable to a future application. At no time have the former Social Services done this. I have repeatedly asked what there is in my application or the related evidence to make the former Social Services think I can never be suitable to become a foster carer, even after training, but they refuse to answer.

They have been unhelpful in the extreme. I have specifically asked on which of their own criteria outlined in the fourteen competencies they fail me, and they consistently refuse to state. Yet all my personal references gave some very positive evidence and every single one of the fourteen competencies contains positive evidence from my referees, in some cases very positive.

Nor is it simply that the former Social Services turned down my application, but they told me that there was no point in reapplying.

It is relevant to note that my personal referees were unanimous in saying that I am very good at being trained, so any possible doubts could have been addressed and would not have proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. But the former Social Services made no attempt to address any alleged outstanding issues.

It is also relevant to note that on two separate occasions Derby City Council’s former Social Services placed one or two children with me, after checking the prospective child’s bedroom. One occasion was before my application to become a foster carer, and the second was in March 2005, after I had been turned down.

In view of this second occasion, I asked Katie Harris (Head of Service for Fostering and Adoption) to reconsider my application in May 2005 based on this further evidence, but she refused, and indeed did not even mention the matter in her response to my letter.

I had been told, in a letter dated June the 8th 2004 from Sally Penrose (the Fostering Manager), that she hoped to allocate my assessment to a social worker shortly. My prospective social worker would presumably have addressed any issues, yet the former Social Services have done nothing to assess whether any doubts that they may have about me are valid or insurmountable.

These points are made not mainly in order to assess whether or not I am capable of becoming suitable to be a foster carer, once trained, but to demonstrate that the former Social Services have failed to evaluate the evidence properly. In view of the very positive evidence that has been produced in my references, surely nobody is benefited by this approach, with the possible exception of social workers who have decided for their own reasons that they do not wish to work with me.

I am still trying to find out from the former Social Services exactly how I fall short of their own fourteen competencies for becoming a foster carer, and also how I might amend any problems.

Even apart from the above comments, the Fostering Services Regulations 2002 state:
“If a fostering service provider considers that a person is not suitable to act as a foster parent it shall -
(a) give him written notice that it proposes not to approve him, together with its reasons and a copy of the fostering panel's recommendation; and
(b) invite him to submit any written representations within 28 days of the date of the notice.”

At no time has the former Social Services done this, and therefore they surely cannot validly disapprove me as a foster carer until they have followed this procedure. If they do not wish to pursue my application for any reason, then once they have withdrawn their original decision of July 2004 they should give me written notice of their proposal not to approve me, together with all their reasons and a copy of the fostering panel’s recommendation and give me the opportunity to respond.

I have requested the Council to reverse their decision not to pursue my application to become a foster carer, on the basis that the Council did not follow the proper procedure in making this decision, but they have failed to comply with this request. Mr Michael Foote, the Deputy Chief Executive, claims that the Fostering Services Regulations 2002 quoted above “do not apply to [my] situation but to candidates whose completed assessment was turned down by the Fostering Panel”. However, Derby City Council’s own Fostering Services Policy and Procedures Section 5.19 say “Where a social worker feels that an application should not proceed at any stage during the assessment, this should always be discussed with the relevant Service Manager.” Section 5.20 of Derby’s Policy and Procedures goes on to say, “If the Service Manager is in agreement, the applicant will be informed of the reasons for not proceeding. If they do not accept the reasons given, they will be informed by letter of their right to appeal to the Fostering Panel, by making written representations within 28 days of the date of the letter.” This quite clearly would apply to me, even though my assessment was not completed, since Section 5.19 provides for applicants who are not approved at any stage during the assessment. Mr Foote refers to the appeal as being applicable only to those whose assessment has been completed and turned down by the Fostering Panel, but Derby’s own Policy and Procedures state that we can appeal to the Fostering Panel whatever stage of the assessment we were in. In view of the former Social Services’ failure to follow proper procedure, it seems to me that Derby City Council has no reasonable alternative but to backtrack and now follow that procedure.

I have written to Derby City Council's Chief Executive, and am trying to obtain a resolution to this problem.

fostering application

2006-07-26T15:12:00.000Z

My case started in 2004 when the former Social Services (now Children and Young People’s Services) attached to Derby City Council informed me that they would not proceed any further with my application to become a foster carer of children in care. They said that they had received adverse references, and that as they were confidential they could not disclose any more information than that. The information which I had received in connection with my application had advised me to ask for the reasons for not pursuing my application if I got turned down, so I wrote requesting more information. Katie Harris, head of the Fostering and Adoption team of Derby former Social Services (now Children and Young People's Services), insisted that they could not give me any more information as the reasons were contained in confidential references that had been given for me. I did not believe this, so I requested a copy of the records held on me under the Data Protection Act. The authorities took far longer than the permitted forty days to provide them. They then started to give different, and rather contradictory reasons, as to why they had turned down my application, presumably because they realised that my legal representatives and I could now see that my confidential references had been far from adverse. Derby former Social Services (now the Children and Young People's Services) also refused to correct erroneous records, while acknowledging that they were erroneous.
In fact, I have a rather complicated case against them, and Derby City Council looked into it and questioned people at the former Social Services (now the Children and Young People's Services), but most of my points were not answered at all satisfactorily. My case has now gone to the Ombudsman (in York). Initially their investigator reckoned that I had a case as regards (a) the fact that Derby City Council's records do not show a full picture; (b) the fact that Derby City Council delayed unreasonably in providing me with access to their files; and (c) the fact that Derby City Council took an unreasonably long time to respond to my complaint and failed to explain to me the difference between the Former Social Services and the Corporate complaints procedure. However, the Ombudsman's Investigator said that they could do nothing about the actual decision not to proceed with assessing me as a prospective foster carer, as the former Social Services (now Children and Young People's Services) allegedly had the discretion to turn people down. (I have subsequently found that this is inaccurate, as there is a procedure for them to follow ... see here.) An additional related complaint is that it appears that the former Social Services (now Children and Young People's Services) seriously misrepresented the facts, and attempted to hide the real reason for non-acceptance of my application by falsely making out that the reasons were contained in confidential references from three of my personal referees. They were insistent that for this reason (i.e. that they were confidential at the request of my referees) they could not tell me any more, but after my referees had agreed to disclose the references, the former Social Services (now Children and Young People's Services) started to make other excuses. The Ombudsman appears to be dismissive of this complaint, and won't investigate it. It sounds to me as if Derby City Council's former Social Services deliberately tried to mislead me as to the reasons for not pursuing my application, not to say lied! This could have created discord between me and personal acquaintances who had been kind enough to give me references, and whom the former Social Services (now Children and Young People's Services) claimed had given me adverse references.
When I sent in a complaint about how I had been treated to the former Social Services last year, the former Social Services advised me to go to an Ombudsman but DIDN'T tell me how to get an Independent Review, which their own complaints procedure said I was entitled to. It now appears, therefore, that I have been deprived of this opportunity. I originally applied to the Ombudsman regarding this case in October 2005, but they apparently asked Derby City Council Corporate Executive whether they had looked at the case and were told that they had not, so they passed it onto the Derby City Council Corporate Executive to look at. However, I am now told that when a case has been before the Corporate Executive (as opposed to the former Social Services itself) I do not have the option of an Independent Review. It appears that my case has been very mishandled. Even regarding the parts of my complaint that the Ombudsman IS supposed to look into, the Investigator is failing to do it properly. Derby City Council has offered amendments to erroneous records, but they are not satisfactory amendments, as they still do not reveal the full picture. The Ombudsman was supposed to be asking Derby City Council to amend records further, but it now turns out that they just asked Derby City Council what they were doing to implement the SUGGESTED UNSATISFACTORY amendments.
An example of an inaccurate record relates to the fact that in 2003 Derby City Council former Social Services placed a child with me for one night. This incident arose when I was interviewed with a view to becoming a foster carer (not of this child), in 2004. I told them that I had had this child placed with me for one night, and I could see my brownie points going up as the social worker took notes. I suppose they saw it as suggesting that I was or might be suitable to foster. However, when I got the logs (under Data Protection Law) I found that what was logged was that it had been CONTEMPLATED to leave a child with me and that in the end this did not happen. The relevance of the child having stayed is shown by the fact that the Social Workers in the Fostering Unit TWICE tried to contact the relevant Social Worker in a different unit, to do with this child, to ask them about it. Why ask twice, if it is irrelevant? However, they conveniently do not say in their log what this social worker answered as to the question of the child having stayed with me, instead logging negative comments that this social worker made about me (because I had complained to the Head of Derby former Social Services about ineptitude of social workers concerning a particular case).When Derby City Council looked into this matter, they so kindly agreed to amend the record to say that it had been contemplated to leave a child with me … full stop. Deleting "but in the end this did not happen". When I mentioned this to the Ombudsman's investigator on the telephone, she volunteered the comment that this sounded to her as if the child had NOT stayed with me. My point exactly. Presumably the fact that he did is logged in HIS case records, so it is too risky for them to say that he didn't, but they don't want to admit that he did. If they ARE trying to deny it completely, why agree to amend the record at all? If they are not purposely putting less than the full truth into my records, why do they OBJECT to saying that he actually did stay?

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