MADAM, I read the article on the recent Ofsted inspection of Herefordshire Children's Services with amazement. How can the senior management claim to be surprised and disappointed with the findings? They have known for some time that the changes made over the last three years would have a significant impact on services available to vulnerable children and young people.

I have over 25 years experience working within Children's Services in various locations and quite a few working for Herefordshire. There is a lack of skilled and experienced social workers which has been the case for some time, however there was a high quality support service for vulnerable children and families which provided another layer to ease the load.

However over the last 18 months this has been eroded by this management team and the experience, skills and quality have gone. The council has lost a high number of skilled and experienced staff either through compulsory redundancy or resignation because it failed to listen to the concerns about the changes being made, in fact staff who spoke up have been systematically removed, retaining only staff and frontline managers who are inexperienced.

I cannot recall a more damning report by Ofsted. Many individual areas came up as good quality service provision in the past so things have gone seriously wrong for the overall report of the service to have fared so badly. People need to be held to account. In all recent Ofsted case reviews nationally it has always found that agencies have not communicated or worked together sufficiently. However, I don't feel this was always the case in Herefordshire.

Many agencies worked and communicated well. The changes that were brought in before I left were, in theory, good practical moves, however these were already happening they just needed management validation instead of complete overhaul, which then created a culture of differing agencies who had previously worked together feeling threatened and de-skilled.

I am very proud of the senior social worker who has spoken out publicly as I know many staff are concerned about losing their jobs in the present climate.

I would be very surprised if the authority can turn this around in six months unless it can find a way of replacing the skilled and experienced staff it has lost.

I for one am not surprised, however I am disappointed, not for the Council but for the children and young people this management regime has failed to support adequately.

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