The latest complaints about the way councils treat children are in, with the focus this week being on children with special needs. There has also been a marked drop in the number of complaints about family law cases.
The news published on this site last week that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman was unable to investigate complaints relating to evidence and conduct brought to light in court hearings is unlikely to have affected the number of complaints in this area, though only three such cases are listed this week.
Most of the cases in the latest newsletter highlight councils withdrawing support services for children with special needs. The Ombudsman does hold several councils liable for removing these services and tells those councils at fault to reinstate support, though it’s clear from these cases that councils are cutting back and trying to save costs.
You can read the decisions here.
Researching Reform 
I am at a loss to understand the reasoning behind the cuts that local authorities are prepared to make when it comes to the ordinary people in their communities; especially when I remember the elaborate and costly refreshments they were prepared to lay on when the occasion arose.
Equally, the pay for those at the top of the salary ladder has increased as the number of manual and maintenance in-house jobs has decreased and been put out to tender.for the private sector. This has corresponded with job-title changes; so Clerks to the Council have become Chief Executives and Heads of Departments have become Managers. The titles may have changed, the rates and scales of remuneration have increased but most certainly the services to the communities have deteriorated or disappeared.
The whole ethos of community service has changed as we have become progressively more commercially orientated and obsessed with materialism.There was a time when it seemed we had broken through the class barriers, but now they are becoming more evident as the poorer educated fall further and further behind in the welfare stakes.
It may be argued that they have had their chances and failed to grasp them, but it’s a bit like telling a blind man to grab a lifeline he cannot see; unless you actually put the line in his hand, he cannot take hold of it and be rescued. The uneducated cannot be expected to appreciate the finer points of education in so many words unless they are given visual examples of how their knowledge may benefit them.
So many visual examples were withdrawn when we stopped teaching children how to cook, sew, housekeep, or develop their carpentry, gardening and general maintenance skills at school; that led to the other big mistake; ending the place that technical schools and colleges played in everyday life. We need the skills of those who work with their hands as much as we need those who are academically inclined.
Perhaps that is why our politicians are now so obsessed with finance and cushy living rather than getting their hands soiled in the everyday, mundane tasks of life as lived by you and me – the man and woman in the street.Even the EU, envisaged as the open sesame to freedom of travel and trade between the countries and people of Europe, has turned into a power-struggle between avaricious politicians who are greedy for only one thing – power.
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Pingback: This Week’s Child Welfare Complaints Decisions « Musings of a Penpusher
Theres a growing number of people who have Zero trust in the LGO due to the high number of cases that are dropped.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Children in care are forbidden to reveal to their parents at contact any abuse suffered at the hands of fosterers or social workers ! One word about such matters and contact is stopped immediately and the child isolated !
Yet we claim to be a civilised country………………….
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This is 100% true and must shurly be a violation of human rights.
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