In modern public life, it has become all too clear that there are two sorts of public services that achieve, “Outstanding” ratings on regulatory inspections. Those which are actually delivering a good service, and those which simply hide failures and conceal problems, including abuse. For example, a hospital for the vulnerable known as Whorlton Hall received a CQC rating of, ‘good’ until it was exposed by BBC Panorama as an institution in which staff systematically, cruelly, abused disabled adults (archive). A clue as to which sort Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) is can be found in a Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) report from 2021, reported in the Herts Advertiser that, “Herts Council has ‘pattern of mishandling children’s services complaints'” (archive). At the time, the Hertfordshire County Council, Director of Children and Young People was Jo Fisher. MHN has been horrified recently to identify similar and ongoing problems, some of which have now been admitted, which have not been picked up in a recent Ofsted inspection of the authority. The circumstances raise questions about the leadership and suitability of Jo Fisher, Sarah Canto from Ofsted who recently inspected Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services and also Amanda Spielman, Chief Inspector at Ofsted. Weak leadership and weak procedures risk enabling abuse. In my opinion, Hertfordshire County Council and Ofsted have both.

How long should it take a council to deal with a safeguarding concern? A week, two weeks? A month? Baby P did not even live two years, and he spent much of it experiencing horrific abuse (archive) before his tragic death at 17 months. The question is not rhetorical. I made three child protection referrals about a family (who have been anonymised here), via the Hertfordshire County Council system and the first is still showing as, ‘Open’ after nearly two years. Reading the referral screen, I was concerned that at best, the council workflow system is insufficiently robust. At worst the case was ignored.

Child protection matters in the UK are rightly highly confidential. I would not expect much response as the result of a referral. I would have expected, however, the state to change from, ‘open’ to, ‘triaged’ or ‘reviewed’. In fact, until a recent complaint, I have never had anything from the council beyond an automated email acknowledgement to show these reports were submitted. It is clear, however, that something happened with the more recent ones due to what seems to be a subsequent breach of confidence by the council.

By way of background, there is a woman who will be anonymised here, but lives not so very far from me, who exists in a permanent cloud of weed, and / or paranoia. For the sake of this article, I will use a false name and call her ‘Betty’. Betty and her partner both have Community Protection Notices and / or CPN warnings against them – a modern equivalent of an ASBO. These were issued by the Borough Council (Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, WHBC). The reasons for this are anti-social behaviour, noise and making false allegations (for example, blaming random other people for the noise). Betty frequently lies, for example, she made false allegations against another female resident, when I had a video proving it was Betty. Betty has had a procession of creepy-looking male partners, and has multiple children in her council flat.

At a minimum, the children have been exposed to excessive noise, drug use, paranoia (in the literal sense, not hyperbole) and an emotionally difficult environment. Betty frequently uses her children in conflicts to gain sympathy. For example, “Hi […] I am young mum […] is possible that u could stop walking around unsocialable hours”. After being given a CPN not to speak to certain people (including me), her children, who had previously shown no interest – started to call out to them. Which I referred to social services. On one occasion I saw a child standing dangerously in a window to call out. The next day I saw them, to be fair, at least behind the window sill not on it but still calling out, and sent a photograph to social services. The report was still marked, ‘open’, at the time of writing.

Betty is clearly a troubled woman. She has found difficulty in persuading local police and authorities that, “walking around” is a crime. Another difficulty she faces is that some of her complaints objectively did not happen. She complains of noise when individuals can prove they were out – on the other side of the country. She has complained of leaks in her flat from other properties, but a council surveyor confirmed that bar one the water came from … inside Betty’s council flat.

More recently, Betty’s latest partner shouted abuse at me for providing a picture of one of Betty’s children to local police and council(s), claiming I was a, “nonce”. He was then served with a CPN Warning by the Borough Council. Betty reported this to police only to be rebuffed again on the basis that sending pictures of fully clothed children to police and social services is not, in fact, a crime. The difficulty is that Betty and her partner should never have seen the pictures. Individuals from other local government bodies have expressed dismay that a social worker at Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) showed Betty the pictures. When all the other local institutions, which generally take a cautious approach for evidentiary reasons, have concluded there are legitimate concerns with the family, HCC is out of step.

I do not know what sort of, ‘support’ HCC are providing to Betty, but I am getting an impression of disguised compliance – that is, sneakily hiding things from her social worker / the authorities. Betty can be crudely manipulative, and it is conceivable a lazy social worker might choose to see her as the, ‘victim’ despite numerous complaints by multiple other residents, and findings against her by other local authorities. I have escalated to a complaint within HCC, and may in due course bring a claim against them, in the same way I obtained damages from Merseycare in the Esther Baker case, when they revealed confidential information. In the meantime, as far as I am aware, the social worker on the case has not been removed pending an investigation, to give a fresh look at it. More concerningly, the council has failed so far to disclose the identity of the social worker to me for the purposes of a complaint to Social Work England. Thwarting or failing to disclose to this regulator is very serious, and again raises very serious concerns about the council’s handling of the matter.

HCC’s ability to handle child protection referrals and complaints gives me the impression of dysfunctional chaos. As a simple example, I called in to pursue an issue relating to my complaint. The switchboard identified a member of staff I wished to speak to but they were away from their desk. So, I asked them to leave a message. Every other institution, like the police control room, can do this. HCC – no. The call centre workers told me on three occasions that they are not allowed to leave a message unless it can be linked to a specific child’s name. Obviously this is intended to keep messages correctly linked to a child’s case to avoid data being lost. Unfortunately, the downside of having no alternatives is that messages without a child’s name are lost entirely. It is a particularly moronic example of bureaucracy without common sense.

The same dysfunction has continued to be evidenced in recent Ombudsman decisions. In late 2022, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman awarded around £15,000 damages against Hertfordshire County Council (archive) because of failures by Children’s Services, including for ignoring previous decisions. It is important to understand that one would generally expect some adverse decisions against even the best local authority. What is deeply troubling here is the “pattern”. This is not a one-off mistake by a social worker. This is an authority that had a ruling against it and carried on regardless. These, in short, are systemic failings.

My extremely limited initial interactions with HCC and casual research identified –

• Child protection referrals not updated, including one for nearly two years
• Call centre workers given nonsensical instructions not to pass on messages
• The Ombudsman alleging a, “pattern of behaviour” by HCC Children’s Services
• HCC ignoring Ombudsman decisions
• Failing to suspend / move a social worker subject of a serious complaint
• Failing to disclose identity of social worker for the purpose of a regulatory complaint

These problems are all representative of a local authority that does not have the right systems in place to support its work. That is not the fault of resource shortage. It is not the fault of mistakes by individuals. In my opinion, the observed problems can only arise from failures in the leadership of Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services. Since Jo Fisher now holds the role of Executive Director of Children’s Service, it is to be inferred that responsibility rests with her.

So, I was surprised on reading Fisher’s public LinkedIn profile to read that HCC Children’s Services has obtained an, “Outstanding” from Ofsted, including specifically in the category of leadership. This seemed to fly in the face of repeated, very serious, criticisms from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman as well as the problems I encountered.

Ofsted is itself a troubled organisation, which is currently facing calls for mass civil disobedience from teachers who say its rating system is inadequate, unfair and amounts to bullying. The longstanding resentment has been fuelled by the suicide of Ruth Perry (archive), described by one teacher to be “murder” (archive).

The report on Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services, here (archive), was written by a lead inspector called Sarah Canto. No other inspectors are named (unlike other Ofsted reports). The report is bizarre. It is a series of oracular pronouncements and contains no analysis, no explanation of evidence just a series of bare assertions in numbered paragraphs one step away from a PR puff-piece. Consider –

“6. Children at risk of significant harm receive a prompt response. Strategy meetings have strong multi-agency participation and result in clear information sharing, decision-making and action planning. Subsequent child protection enquiries are timely and thorough.”

The statement above is almost valueless. It is a bare assertion. It does not state who was spoken to, how many records were reviewed, or how many meetings were observed. Consider the following hypothetical alternative paragraph, which is closer to how reports from non-failing regulators like the CQC appear –

“We reviewed 100 recent child protection alerts in strict order of receipt. We found it [easy / hard] to obtain information from HCC’s records. We reviewed the quality of the prioritisation decision making. We found the records [clear and thorough / inadequate / non-existent]. Decisions were of [good / poor] quality and explained [clearly / inadequately]. In the [19] records where children were at risk of significant harm, they received a response within [x hours]. We attended 10 strategy meetings. The council knew which dates we would attend, but not which meetings. Meetings were […]“

From reading this report I have no evidence Sarah Canto did any work or first hand observation beyond accepting assertions made by management at HCC. I put my concerns to HCC. I asked Ofsted to withdraw and review Sarah Canto’s report. I asked the following questions, giving a week to respond –

1. As to paragraph 6 of Sarah Canto’s report of her inspection of 23 to 27 January 2023, did she rely on the council’s own data, or did she review records to validate the council’s information and quality of same?
2. How many records were reviewed by Sarah Canto to back the assertion that, “Children at risk of significant harm receive a prompt response”?
3. If the answer to 2 is non-zero, what methodology was used to assess the records?
4. How many strategy meetings did Sarah Canto attend? What methodology was used to assess them?
5. How did Sarah Canto measure the purported timeliness and thoroughness of child protection inquiries? For example, did she go on client visits, review records afterwards?
6. Why is none of this information in the report?

Ofsted’s response so far has been chaotic. On 12 April 2023, the day I placed the media inquiry, I received an acknowledgement letter stating that I would receive a response, “as soon as possible”. The inquiry requested a response within a week by 17:30 18 April 2023. So, on 17 April I placed a reminder. I received an email from Hannah Simpson, a correspondence officer at Ofsted, stating that they would respond at some unspecified date that, “may be later than the deadline given”. I said this was unacceptable, and received a further email from Dimitrios Gavrilakis an executive correspondence officer promising a response by May. In the meantime, Hertfordshire County Council did make a partial response – the admissions embarrassing for the council, but damning for Ofsted and Canto.

The law favours journalists (whether citizen or professional) who take reasonable steps to verify facts. The key word here is reasonable. Stories and comment are written about current events, and writers have a legitimate interest in producing stories in a timely fashion about current foci of public debate. Those on the receiving end of criticism often try to leverage this by delaying articles. I draw adverse inferences from the fact that the first two responses from Ofsted did not give a target date for a response and the questions I ask are not complicated – for example, “How many strategy meetings did Sarah Canto attend?”

Sarah Canto has of course been copied into my emails and one email alone has been viewed 80 times at the time of writing, according to the email tracker I use. I draw adverse inferences from the fact I have not already had an assertive response along the lines of – “1. I reviewed the council’s records directly myself. 2. 50 3. […]“. The fact that the information is not in the published report and cannot be provided promptly is itself a problem.

I will revisit the eventual answers in a follow-up article in due course. The opinion I have formed for now is of an organisation rightly in the public eye unable to promptly justify its, ‘inspection’ conclusions with even the most basic evidence and seeking to delay another bad story rather than answer simple questions in a timely fashion. It does not give the impression of being an organisation where the focus is the welfare of children but one concerned with the well-being of its leaders.

I also asked HCC some questions. At the time I asked, a complaint of mine was pending. The questions were as follows –

1. What urgent action has HCC Children’s Services taken over outcome recording for child protection concerns on its online portal?
2. What action has HCC Children’s Services taken over the flaws in its message handling procedures in its call centre?
3. Has the social worker at the centre of my complaint been suspended pending the investigation?
4. Has the social worker at the centre of my complaint been removed from the case as a neutral measure pending the investigation?

Hertfordshire County Council did in fact provide a partial response to these questions by the deadline and since I kept the complaints manager at work late, I will refrain from naming her. The response, despite valiant attempts to minimise, admits that the logging of referrals needs to change. In fact, the failure to update has applied to all child protection referrals in Hertfordshire. Which leads me, along with the matters below, to the conclusion that it is to be reasonably suspected that Sarah Canto did not review any raw referral records at all when inspecting Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services.

“These automated responses do acknowledge receipt of your referrals, however it would have been more helpful if they had provided information on the next steps including when the referral would be reviewed and actioned. The Council’s Customer Service team are looking to amend the auto response accordingly. […] all are [sic] referrals, once opened by the Customer Service Centre, show as ‘Open’ status.”

The council asserted that all the reports were followed up appropriately. Certainly at least one was followed up. That does not eliminate the concern about the referral system, which the council now admits it would be, “helpful” to change. I was a little concerned about two aspects of the response. The response letter said child protection referrals were for, “professionals”, and gave an email address for the general public to use – protectedreferrals.cs@hertfordshire.gov.uk.

However, a search of the Hertfordshire County Council website (archive) using Google site constrained did not find that address advertised to the public by the council website. The search yielded two results – both copies of a form to be filled in by professionals such as teachers with concerns (albeit with a non-mandatory section for parents to consent), and that is all. In fact it seems to be a paper / PDF version of the form I filled in.

If, as the council’s formal letter avers, that address is intended to be available for the public, it is another catastrophic systemic failing calling into question the leadership of Children’s Services and begging the question as to why Sarah Canto did not identify it. Her report at paragraph 2, for example states, “Children who need help and protection are referred appropriately to ‘The Gateway’, Hertfordshire’s ‘front door’, so that their needs and risks can be assessed”. It would be difficult for such referrals to be made if contact addresses are not appropriately advertised.

That snippy attitude to being challenged and at members of the public daring to make referrals and disagree with social services is also a grave, systemic, concern. It comes across as a mid-twentieth century model of services seeing themselves as provided to the hoi polloi by their betters.

In my opinion, leadership at HCC Children’s Services is inadequate. I base this on repeated criticisms by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman of systemic failings including the, “pattern” referred to in the 2021 case, the ignoring of previous rulings in the 2022 case above, the now admitted fact that referrals were all simply left, ‘open’ and the fact that the referrals email allegedly for the public is not clearly advertised to them on the council’s website. I also base the opinion on my own observation of processes including apparent disclosure of confidential information, failure to confirm they have suspended a social worker the subject of a serious complaint and failure to disclose the identity of a social worker for the purpose of a formal complaint to Social Work England.

Ofsted’s inspection seems, based on my very reasonable questions, to be totally inadequate. In my opinion, weak leadership at HCC is putting children at risk and in effect, creating an environment likely to enable abuse. The same might be said of Sarah Canto, whose report at best gives no idea of the evidence reviewed in reaching its conclusions. Given she has missed issues now admitted by the council, and failed to answer my questions in a timely fashion, I assert that it is reasonable to suspect she did not view much, if any, primary data during her inspection.

On a personal level, readers of this blog will be aware that your author is a victim of serious sex crime. The disclosure of information in that context has caused huge distress and in fact I consider it tantamount to sexual abuse of myself by Jo Fisher’s department. In the absence of evidence of serious action against the social worker concerned, I intend to spend a significant amount of time scrutinising HCC.

I am reluctant criticise Ofsted, as I think that teachers and social workers do need inspection and are often resistant. However, my investigation has driven me to the conclusion (very reluctantly) that the NAS-UWT are correct. Ofsted needs to be abolished and replaced with something better. The same might be said of Jo Fisher.

Readers who share my concerns are invited to email jo.fisher@hertfordshire.gov.uk, owen.mapley@hertfordshire.gov.uk, amanda.spielman@ofsted.gov.uk and sarah.canto@ofsted.gov.uk.