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Chapter 28: Management structures and responsibility for Clwyd Social Services from 1974 to 1996

Introduction

28.01  In considering the responsibility of higher management in Clwyd the Tribunal has had to have in mind a limited number of specific questions posed by the terms of reference of this inquiry. These questions may be re-stated for the purposes of this part of the report as follows:

(1)  Could Clwyd County Council through the placement of the children or through the regulation or management of the facilities have prevented the abuse or detected its occurrence at an earlier stage?

(2)  What was the response of Clwyd County Council to allegations and complaints of abuse made by children in care whilst they were in care or later or by any other persons, and to what extent was the response inadequate and how could it have been improved?

(3)  Did Clwyd County Council discharge its functions in respect of children in care appropriately?

28.02  One of the many difficulties facing the Tribunal in examining these questions, covering a long period of time, is that Clwyd County Council ceased to exist on 1 April 1996 and could not, therefore, be represented before us. The successor local authorities in North Wales were represented but they did not purport to present a case on behalf of Clwyd County Council. It was left to the Tribunal itself to conduct the investigation, with assistance from the successor authorities, and to seek out appropriate witnesses. Inevitably in this process the Tribunal has been encumbered with considerable detail about administrative structures and with immense documentation, much of which is only marginally relevant to the central questions that we have to consider.

  28.03  In the context of the questions that we have re-stated in paragraph 28.01, the main thrust of this part of our inquiry has been into the following matters:

(a)  The purpose and suitability of the children's homes provided by Clwyd County Council.

(b)  The placement of children in those homes and the regimes to which they were subjected.

(c)  The recruitment of staff for the homes and the subsequent management of both.

(d)  The training of staff and guidance given to them.

(e)  The adequacy of individual care in the homes.

(f)  Monitoring and inspection of the homes.

(g)  Complaints procedures.

(h)  The response to such complaints as were made.

(i)  Staff disciplinary procedures.

(j)  The adequacy of field social worker visiting and of care planning for the children.

(k)  Preparation for leaving care.

(l)  The responsibilities of Clwyd County Council in respect of private and voluntary homes and other residential establishments within their area.

(m)  Whether any fault is attributable to Clwyd County Council for the abuse in foster homes that has been disclosed.

  28.04  It will be convenient to deal also in this part of the report with the Jillings inquiry and report[362] and the role of the Council's insurers in discussion about possible publication of that report.

  28.05  In carrying out this part of our task we will try to avoid as far as possible unnecessary references to Clwyd's administrative structures but a preliminary account is necessary here to explain the assignment of responsibilities to individuals during the period under review. We have already given, in Chapter 3 of this report, a brief account of the legislative and administrative background to Clwyd's assumption of responsibility for its area on 1 April 1974 and we take this as read in order to avoid unnecessary repetition. In particular, we introduced in paragraphs 3.20 and 3.21 the first Director of Social Services for Clwyd, Emlyn Evans, and his Deputy, (Daniel) Gledwyn Jones; and we made the point that, unusually, no one in the initial senior management team in Clwyd had a specialist background in child care.

The Social Services Department under Emlyn Evans, 1974 to 1980

  28.06  Joseph Emlyn Evans, the Director of Social Services for Denbighshire from January 1971 and for Flintshire from about April 1973, served as Director of Social Services for Clwyd from April 1974 to 31 January 1980, when he retired at the age of 60 years. Throughout his Clwyd period, his Deputy was (Daniel) Gledwyn Jones, who succeeded him as Director.

  28.07  Evans' recollection is that, on his retirement, there were 1865 staff in the department, which was responsible then for between 90 and 100 establishments.

  28.08  In the early days there were two relevant Assistant Directors (of a total of four), one responsible for residential and day care and the other for fieldwork. The former was Tudor O Jones and immediately under him was a Principal Officer (Residential and Day Care Services), Bryan Hughes. Under the latter, from September 1975, was a Principal RDCO, Veronica Pares. Neither T O Jones nor Bryan Hughes had any experience of child care but Veronica Pares,who joined the department as an RDCO in January 1975, had wide experience as Homes Supervisor in Berkshire Children's Department from 1965. According to her statement, her responsibility as Principal RDCO was to advise heads of homes; to be responsible for staff supervision by means of monthly visits to all the residential homes in her area; and to submit her findings in written reports. There were also about four RDCOs with responsibilities for such matters as staffing, supplies, children and the elderly.

  28.09  The Assistant Director (Fieldwork) was Raymond Powell, who was responsible for a wide range of social services, including the work of six Area Offices (the areas corresponded to the new local government districts). Under him the person nominally responsible for children until 1984 was the Principal Officer (Fieldwork), Iorweth Thomas, but he was a mental health specialist. The person effectively responsible, although in theory reporting to Powell through Thomas, was the Principal Social Worker (Children), Gordon Ramsay, who, after service in Cheshire, had been a Senior Child Care Officer in Flintshire Children's Department and then a Senior Social Worker in the same county, managing a generic team. Ramsay's job description included advising on all aspects of child care and considering jointly residential and day care facilities. Although, he did not have direct responsibility for residential homes and the area offices did not come under him, Ramsay was given responsibility for the placement of all children in care from about mid-1975 and was required to visit all the Area Offices regularly to discuss review procedures and the maintenance of good practice in child care matters at area level. It appears that Ramsay retained substantially the same duties until he retired on 31 July 1987, shortly before he reached the age of 60 years.

  28.10  Quite radical changes to this structure were made early on. In 1976 Geoffrey Wyatt replaced Bryan Hughes and became Principal Officer Residential Services. Wyatt was to remain a key figure thereafter in relation to residential care for children in Clwyd for the next 16 years (apart from the period 1986 to 1989), until he took early retirement on 30 September 1992 at the age of 54 years. He held a Home Office Certificate in Residential Child Care and had been involved in work with children since about 1962; he had worked as a Child Care Officer for Denbighshire County Council from March 1969; and his most recent work, from 1971, had been as Courts and Police Liaison Officer for Denbighshire and then Clwyd. In 1976 Wyatt was shown in the organisation chart as directly responsible for all residential and day care establishments, reporting to Raymond Powell.

  28.11  By this time T O Jones had retired and the "groups" formerly headed by him and by Raymond Powell had been merged under the latter as Assistant Director Operational (Fieldwork Services). The former fieldwork hierarchy remained substantially unchanged but, on the residential and day care side, an important change was to follow on 1 April 1977. From that date immediate management responsibility for the residential homes was transferred to the six Area Officers, each with a small complement of RDCOs. The Area Officers, however, reported direct to Powell and not to Wyatt, who was nevertheless shown in the relevant organisation chart as having a Principal Social Worker and two RDCOs working to him. It appears that none of the Area Officers had any experience of the management of children's homes, although Emlyn Evans said that four of the six were "children trained". The most important area, Wrexham/Maelor, failed to fill its required establishment of three RDCOs.

  28.12  Another development at this time was the appointment of two inspectors, whose roles were to inspect every social services establishment within the county. The inspectors appointed were Veronica Pares and Ivor Hughes (subsequently the Principal Social Worker working to Wyatt). Each inspector covered half the county, spending about half her/his working time outside their shared office, and they reported to the Assistant Director Management Services. They received a week's training at the Welsh Office. The posts lasted for three years until the inspectorate was discontinued on economy grounds; and Pares took early retirement in June 1980.

  28.13  The Senior Management Team from 1976 onwards comprised the Director, the Deputy Director and three Assistant Directors, the third of whom was responsible for administration. Part of the background to the changes made from 1974 onwards was a Ten Year Plan that had been submitted by Emlyn Evans to the shadow Social Services Committee on 4 October 1973. This was said to have been drawn up in response to Welsh Office Circular 195/72 addressed to the predecessor authorities. It is unnecessary to repeat the details of the Plan but it envisaged three phases of development, the last beginning in April 1977, and one of its objectives was the development of a comprehensive range of services as near as possible to the client with the establishment of six Area Offices as social work bases.

  28.14  The chain of command to the top was clear in theory but its practical day to day implications were much less clear. Emlyn Evans told the Tribunal that he believed in delegation and that he delegated responsibility for children's services to Gledwyn Jones because the latter had a background in child care. Gledwyn Jones, on the other hand, said that he was happy to accept the delegated responsibility but that he had no specific experience in child care: he had had some experience as a senior social worker in Pembrokeshire in working closely with the Children's Department but he was not "children trained" and had not been a Child Care Officer. He believed very strongly that the staff under him were carrying out their responsibilities and he trusted them.

  28.15  The relevant senior officer under Gledwyn Jones from 1977 onwards, Raymond Powell, also lacked experience of statutory child care work. His experience, for about 13 years from the age of 24 years, had been in mental health, although he had had about six years experience of wider social work services by 1977. Moreover, he had little management training and his remit for that year embraced all services delivered to clients. Whilst Iorwerth Thomas concentrated his attention on his mental health duties, effective day to day responsibility for children's services fell upon Geoffrey Wyatt and Gordon Ramsay.

O & M Report, February 1980

  28.16  In the course of the year before the retirement of Emlyn Evans, an investigation was carried out into the overall organisation and general management of the Social Services Department by the Organisation and Methods Department of Clwyd County Council (as part of its general remit) and it reported in February 1980. It found that there was a deficiency at senior and junior management levels; some officers at Assistant Director and Senior Social Worker level had more responsibility than they could be expected to discharge; there was inadequate support to management from specialist advisers in child care matters and there was also inadequate control, direction and co-ordination of fieldwork. The report stated that the deficiency in professional resources was particularly evident in the control of client cases where the Department was most vulnerable.

  28.17  Contrary to the evidence to us to which we have referred in paragraph 28.14 the report stated that the Deputy Director did not have responsibility for any specific function. His main role was said to be that of general overseer of the whole Department and his duties were described as duplicating in the main those of the Director in the co-ordination, control and direction of the Department's services. A major recommendation was that the Deputy Director, whilst continuing to deputise for the Director, should be directly accountable for all client services provided by the Operational Services and Residential and Day Care Services. This was in part a consequence of the report's recommendation that responsibility for Residential and Day Care Services should revert to headquarters to which we refer later. The Deputy Director's role would essentially be of co-ordinating the two functions to form a totally integrated client service. It was envisaged that this would provide the necessary executive management of the service, ensuring that County Council policy and statutory requirements were being properly implemented; and a major function of the post would be the development of future policy and strategic planning.

  28.18  Amongst the report's criticisms was that, whereas Wyatt (described as Principal Officer (Residential and Day Care)) was responsible to the Assistant Director (Powell), he reported in many instances direct to the Director of Social Services. Wyatt's main functions were identified as:

"a.  Overall co-ordination of residential and day care services.

b.  The formulation of the residential and day care budget.

c.  Industrial relations in residential and day care establishments.

d.  Departmental committee representation in all residential and day care activities."

The report went on to point out that, despite Wyatt's responsibility for residential and day care establishments, the latter were actually under the immediate control of Area Officers, who had the responsibility to oversee and maintain standards through Area RDCOs. The view expressed in the report was that Wyatt could not properly fulfil his co-ordinating role because of the division of responsibilities.

  28.19  The report noted that, at that time, the Residential and Day Care Service comprised 65 establishments employing almost 1,000 staff. The running costs of the service amounted to £3Ö million per year. In the light of its criticisms the report recommended that a new separate division should be created, headed by an Assistant Director, which would have responsibility for all non-social work functions relating to the management of residential and day care establishments. The Area Officers would, however, retain responsibility for the provision of a social work service to clients in residential establishments. The Area RDCOs would continue to be based in the Area Offices for administrative convenience, but would become accountable to the new Assistant Director of Residential and Day Care Services.

  28.20  The report did not comment on the anomalous position of Ramsay but it made the further important recommendation that an Operational Support Division should be formed to provide the Department (and Committee) with a "totally integrated and much needed specialist advisory and support service" on defined matters, including the co-ordination and implementation of training policy.

  28.21  One other aspect of the report requires mention. It recorded that, on average, there were 8.4 field workers in each team and that in one instance there were 13 officers reporting to one team leader, whereas (in the writers' view) it was an accepted and reasonable guideline that one team leader was capable of effective control of only five to six subordinates. It recommended, therefore, that eight Senior Social Workers should be appointed: it was considered that this recommendation could be implemented "without recourse to any new posts at this stage and without diminution of the service".

The Gledwyn Jones regime, 1980 to 1991

  28.22  On Gledwyn Jones' promotion to Director of Social Services, he was succeeded as Deputy by John Hubert Coley, then aged 49 years, who held the office from about July 1980 to February 1984, when he left to become Senior Deputy Director of Social Work for Tayside Regional Council. John Coley had been Assistant Director of Social Services for Dorset since 1974, accountable for the management of residential and day care services and central advisory and monitoring staff for fieldwork and domiciliary services; and he had long and wide experience of operational management in all the relevant fields.

  28.23  Coley's successor as Deputy Director of Social Services was John Christopher Jevons, who joined Clwyd Social Services Department on 9 January 1984 as Assistant Director (Policy and Resources). John Jevons, then 37 years old, had degrees in mathematics, social administration and social work and management science and had most recently served for ten years as Social Development Manager for Milton Keynes Development Corporation; but he did not have experience in child care matters. He remained with Clwyd County Council for 11 years, succeeding Coley as Deputy in October 1984 and becoming Director on 15 April 1991 on the retirement of Gledwyn Jones.

  28.24  The recommendations of the O & M report were put before the Social Services (General Purposes) Sub-Committee in March 1980 but were not implemented until 1982, and then only in part. However, the transfer of management responsibility for residential and day care establishments from Area Offices back to headquarters had been effected in 1980 and the RDCOs had been similarly transferred. Wyatt's direct responsibilities as Principal Officer Residential Services became clearer and the range of those responsibilities was recognised in December 1982 by his promotion to the new post of Assistant Director (Residential). As such, Wyatt initially had only one Principal Social Worker (Ivor Hughes) working under him with various RDCOs but from 1984 there were three Principal Officers, one of whom, John Llewellyn Thomas, was specifically responsible for children. The line of command was then from the heads of children's homes through two RDCOs to Thomas and thence to Wyatt. However, in 1986 Wyatt became Assistant Director (Adult Services) and Raymond Powell became the Assistant Director responsible for children and family services with John Llewellyn Thomas under him as Principal Officer (Children). Powell retired in October 1989 and Wyatt then held a watching brief for children and family services until reorganisation in 1990.

  28.25  John Llewellyn Thomas came to Clwyd in February 1984 from the post of Principal Assistant in the Regional Planning Unit for Wales. He was rising 38 years of age on joining Clwyd and had had about nine years experience, mainly in the unit, after six years service as a probation officer. Initially in Clwyd John Llewellyn Thomas was responsible for the residential homes for children with two RDCOs under him but in 1986 his responsibilities were widened to include day and residential establishments for children, fostering and adoption, child abuse and a number of other matters with several principal social workers or the equivalent under him. Thomas remained in Clwyd seven years before moving to Mid Glamorgan in April 1991 as Assistant Director Children and Family Services. He then became Director of Social Services for Torfaen on the reorganisation of local government.

  28.26  Gordon Ramsay continued as Principal Social Worker (Children) or (Child Care) but his position in the structure altered in 1984 and again in 1986 before he retired in 1987. The first change was recognition of the factual position that had already existed for some time in that he became directly accountable to Powell (rather than theoretically through Iorwerth Thomas) with Intermediate Treatment, Adoption and Fostering under him. Then in 1986, after Iorwerth Thomas' retirement, he was placed under John Llewellyn Thomas and Raymond Powell; he continued to be responsible for child care placements and reviews but his other responsibilities included Family and Day Care Centres, Under Fives' work and statementing of children.

  28.27  Newcomers in the post 1984 structure promoted from within the Department were Norman Green, Gwyneira Hurst and Michael Barnes, all three of whom have been referred to earlier in this report. Norman Green[363] and Gwen Hurst[364] had both been teachers at Bryn Estyn and became RDCOs in 1984, based at headquarters, working under John Llewellyn Thomas (Hurst moved to registration work under Ramsay in 1986). Michael Barnes[365] moved from Chevet Hey to headquarters on 1 January 1988 to take up an appointment as Principal Social Worker (Child and Family Services). By this time Ramsay had retired and had been succeeded by David Palmer (previously County Fostering Officer). According to Barnes, his duty was to manage the remaining nine or ten children's homes, reporting to John Llewellyn Thomas and through him to Powell. Barnes was also given some responsibility for policy, the appointment of staff, training and support; and "gatekeeping", that is, examining the need for a child to be taken into care, was part of his role, although the main burden in relation to this was on Area Officers and the social worker teams.

  28.28  Despite the recommendations of the O & M report the Deputy Directors in the 1980s were not closely involved in children's services. In the first four years of the decade Coley was much involved in other matters. He had to acquaint himself with his new department and then to play a leading role in the implementation of the report. At a later stage 30 per cent of his time was taken up by work on the All Wales Strategy for Mental Handicap and much of the rest was occupied by supporting the Director in the preparation and presentation of material for a variety of purposes. Coley's recollection is that he intervened specifically in two matters, namely, the delays in statutory reviews and failings in admission to care procedures, when he learned of them. He had a specific role to play too in the County Council's function as an adoption agency. However, although he had a general disciplinary and enforcement role also, he cannot recall any complaints or allegations of abuse in respect of children in care reaching him.

28.29  John Jevons' initial appointment in Clwyd as an Assistant Director placed him with responsibility for policy and resources and he retained this responsibility when he became Deputy Director in 1984 (he was not replaced as Assistant Director). As Assistant Director he had Training Officers under him, a Principal Officer (Policy and Resources) mainly concerned with buildings related developments, a research officer occupied with statistical data, and an administrative officer who serviced committees. Jevons' input into policy was mainly in respect of mental handicap and mental illness, on which he was asked to focus. As Deputy Director, he was required to retain these responsibilities and to take on also a number of others, including that of adjudicating officer in disciplinary hearings. Jevons told us in his oral evidence that Gledwyn Jones made it clear to him that he was to focus his energies upon planning services for the various adult client groups whilst he (Gledwyn Jones) would concentrate the bulk of his energies upon children's services. Jevons continued to be heavily involved in mental health strategy and from 1989 he led the Department's response to the Towyn flooding that year, which involved the evacuation and resettlement of over 5,000 people.

  28.30  According to Jevons the Senior Management Team met approximately monthly during his period as Deputy Director. The records of these meetings are incomplete but he was only able to find 27 recorded instances of an issue relating to children's services being discussed at a meeting by that team between 1984 and 1990; he had always assumed that they would have been discussed in individual discussions between the Assistant Director, Raymond Powell, and Gledwyn Jones. Jevons could not recall any matter of complaint relating to children's services being discussed at a meeting of the Senior Management Team and could find no record of any such matter being so discussed.

  28.31  It will be seen that, despite the recurring changes in structure, effective responsibility in the 1980s for children in residential care at Assistant Director level and below remained with a comparatively small group of officers. Geoffrey Wyatt and Raymond Powell carried the responsibility in varying ways as Assistant Directors. John Llewellyn Thomas was the Principal Officer with specific responsibility for children from 1984. Then, of the Principal Social Workers, Ramsay remained the most prominent until 1987, with his responsibility for placements, and Michael Barnes assumed direct responsibility for children's homes from January 1988. The other Principal Social Workers mentioned, Ivor Hughes and David Palmer, were not closely involved with residential care in local authority homes in the 1980s. Hughes did work under Wyatt after ceasing in 1980 to be an inspector but from 1984 he was involved with the elderly and he became responsible for private and voluntary homes in that sector. Palmer was County Fostering Officer from 1982 to 1987; he then became a Principal Social Worker, in succession to Ramsay, but with different responsibilities (child guidance and under fives).

The Final Phase and the delegation to divisions (1990 to 1996)

  28.32  There was renewed turmoil in Clwyd Social Services Department as the 1980s drew to a close. In relation to children, a major and necessary preoccupation was preparation for the implementation of the Children Act 1989 and the many regulations to be made under it, but all social services departments in England and Wales were faced with this task. Implementation of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 also required radical changes. It was at this time that Clwyd set in train a major reorganisation scheme involving the delegation to three new divisions of many functions formerly performed by headquarters.

  28.33  It has been unnecessary for us to probe in detail the genesis of this reorganisation. In his Ten Year Plan[366] Emlyn Evans had envisaged dividing Clwyd with two divisional offices, based at Rhyl and Wrexham, which would be interposed between the area offices and headquarters, but this had not been pursued in the late 1970s for financial reasons. The concept of bringing services as near as possible to the client was revived, however, in the late 1980s and it was resolved to divide Clwyd into three divisions, to be named North, South and East, each with a resident population of about 130,000.

  28.34  This phase of the history is much less important in relation to child abuse than the earlier years of Clwyd's existence and it is not, therefore, necessary to give an elaborate account of the new structure which was put in place in 1990. The proposals for change were set out more or less finally in a document entitled "Future Organisation" dated November 1989 but preliminary work had been carried out, for example, by Clwyd County Council's Systems and Efficiency Unit, which had advised on the proposed devolvement to divisions in March 1989.

28.35  The main relevant changes proposed were that:

(a)  Responsibilities for operational services should be transferred from headquarters to three divisional offices, each with a divisional director.

(b)  Within each division a service manager would head a team responsible for services to one client group (eg the elderly) except in respect of children.

(c)  Child care work was so large in volume that it should be split between a child care social work manager and another manager responsible for the resources to assist and protect children.

(d)  The remaining smaller headquarters team would be responsible for policy and resources matters plus the inspection and support of the services delivered from the divisions.

  28.36  It was said also that the three new divisions would permit service boundaries to follow natural boundaries to a greater extent and would enable each division to be self-sufficient in most of the services covered. As for the size of the population in each division, it was said that the preferred divisional population size of other local authorities that had changed to a divisional structure was in the range of 100,000 to 150,000.

  28.37  These changes were implemented in October 1990, six months before Gledwyn Jones retired (he viewed them without enthusiasm). When John Jevons succeeded him there was no appointment of a Deputy Director to replace Jevons: the three new Divisional Directors, in effect, replaced the former Deputy Director in the hierarchy. At headquarters there was an Assistant Director (Operational Support and Inspection) with a Child Protection Officer and assistant amongst others working under him. There were also three Principal Officers responsible for such matters as development, performance review and training.

  28.38  Whilst Geoffrey Wyatt is not shown by name in the organisational plan for this period that was submitted to us, he told the Tribunal that he remained at headquarters in a non-operational role as the Assistant Director (Operational Support and Inspection) with responsibility for the registration and inspection of children's homes and of residential homes for adults. He had the responsibility also of setting up a complaints procedure. Wyatt retired on30 September 1992 at the age of 54 years.

  28.39  John Llewellyn Thomas did not remain part of the headquarters team. He remained with Clwyd County Council only until April 1991[367] and in his last six months he served as Children's Resources Manager in the East Division. He had, however, played a leading role in preparing for the Children Act 1989, which ultimately came into operation on 14 October 1991, and was chairman of the implementation group; he had also been a member of the relevant Welsh Office working party so that he was aware of both the national picture and what was required locally. In addition to his divisional function he was therefore given "lead" responsibility for children's services policy and development throughout the county.

  28.40  In the event this arrangement proved to be unworkable in Thomas' view and he wrote a report about this for the Director on 20 March 1991, shortly before he left. Major criticisms by Thomas were that:

(a)  Co-ordinating County policies, procedures, standards, budgets etc when the emphasis had been moved from headquarters to division had proved to be very difficult; and there had been "inadequate support at the centre".

(b)  The divisional structure had not taken into consideration fully the requirements of the Children Act 1989 and responsibilities for children were fragmented across each division.

  In Thomas' view Children and Family Services needed a recognised post centrally with adequate administrative and professional support and with sufficient status to give it credibility in relation to the Senior Management Team and others, including the Welsh Office.

  28.41  At this point[368] Clwyd was still providing 103 residential places in eight children's homes and was said to have one of the highest proportions of children placed in residential care in Wales. During 1990/1991 average occupancy of the homes was 97%; and an average of 16 children were in agency placements outside the county.

  28.42  The response to Thomas' criticisms was the appointment eventually of Jackie Thomas[369] as Principal Officer (Children) from January 1992. She was based at headquarters, accountable to the Assistant Director (Strategic Planning), and she chaired the Children Act Implementation Group. Before her appointment one of the Divisional Directors was given the temporary responsibility of co-ordinating children's services policy.

  28.43  Unfortunately, Jackie Thomas was not successful in this new post and her tenure of it lasted only until April 1994. She was not immediately replaced: it seems that she was suffering from a long term illness. Moreover, a report by the Assistant Director (Strategic Planning) at or about this time recommended that the Children Act Implementation Group should be disbanded. Instead, each division should establish its own Children's Services Development Group with a remit for forward planning on all children's services issues. There should, however, be a county-wide Children's Strategy Co-ordination Group charged with such matters as integrated career structures for residential and fieldwork staff, implementing the Criminal Justice Act and the Children's Rights Initiative etc. The Assistant Director (Strategic Planning) would chair this group and other members would be the chairs of the divisional development groups and two other officers, the Principal Officer (Children and Families) and the Development Officer (Children).

  28.44  In the event it does not appear that a Principal Officer (Children and Families) was appointed. Instead Michael Barnes was invited by Jevons in December 1994 to accept secondment from the North Division, based at Prestatyn, in which he had been Children's Resources Manager from October 1990, to headquarters. The secondment was to the Strategic Planning Division and his tasks were expected[370] to include:

"(1)  leading and co-ordinating the production of the Department's Childrens Service Development Plan 1995/6

(2)  co-ordination and monitoring of the Divisional Development Plans for childrens services

(3)  completion of the Department's Leaving Care Strategy

(4)  policy work on a series of outstanding items including the role of the key worker, policy guidance on sexuality, disability and use of leisure

(5)  monitoring of standards in lodgings/aftercare

(6)  race issues and anti-discriminatory practice

(7)  role of the key worker

(8)  recording practice in residential care."

  Barnes took up his duties at headquarters in January 1995 and remained there, assisting the Assistant Director (Strategic Planning) until the demise of Clwyd County Council.

The role of the Chief Executive

  28.45  The Chief Executive of Clwyd County Council for most of the period under review was Mervyn Hugh Phillips, a law graduate of Liverpool University and solicitor, who succeeded his well known predecessor, T M Haydn Rees (now deceased), in 1977, after serving as the latter's Deputy in Clwyd from its creation and in Flintshire before that. Mervyn Phillips served as Chief Executive until he retired on 31 July 1992, at the age of 60 years. He was in turn succeeded by (Edward) Roger (Llewellyn) Davies[371], an Oxford law graduate and solicitor, who had been employed by Clwyd from 1977 as Director of Legal Services, from 1980 as County Secretary, and from 1982 as Deputy Chief Executive, although he continued to be referred to usually as the County Secretary. He served as Chief Executive of Clwyd County Council from1 August 1992 until its demise.

  28.46  Mervyn Phillips produced to the Tribunal a job evaluation of his post as Chief Executive prepared by management consultants in 1985/1986. At that time the gross expenditure of Clwyd County Council was £199m and it had 15,200 employees, of whom 8,700 were full time. The Chief Executive had in his view, four main functions, namely:

(1)  representing the Council on outside bodies and on formal occasions (he was, for example, Clerk to the North Wales Police Authority and Secretary of the Welsh Counties Committee);

(2)  servicing the County Council and three of its central committees, dealing with policy, finance and culture, recreation and libraries;

(3)  development and management of the Council's corporate structure;

(4)  economic development, following the closure of major industrial enterprises on Deeside and in the Wrexham area.

  He did not service or attend the Social Services Committee, which were tasks assigned to Roger Davies as County Secretary/Deputy Chief Executive.

  28.47  The Chief Executive's relationship with other Chief Officers and associated matters, was set out in the job description in 1973: he was given authority over Chief Officers so far as necessary for the efficient management and execution of the Council's functions. The 1985/1986 job evaluation report stated:

"The Chief Executive is head of the Authority's paid service.The departmental Chief Officers report managerially to him, although for the detailed content of Departmental policy and programmes they look for guidance to their respective Committees.

The Chief Executive leads a Chief Officer's Management Team (COMT) consisting of himself and six senior chief officers. This considers matters of common managerial importance across the departments and is the major mechanism at senior officer level for corporate integration.It, for example, considers Departmental options during the planning cycle prior to their submission to members. He calls together other groupings of Chief Officers as needed.

Whilst the COMT meets without senior elected member involvement there is a Policy Liaison Committee which meets eight times per annum, consisting of the leaders of the three main political groups, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Council, the Chief Executive, County Secretary and County Treasurer. This is used to consult with members on major or sensitive issues and is considered a valuable "sounding" stage in between the COMT and Committees. It is not a formal decision-making body. When particular topics require, it is extended to include the relevant Chairman and/or Chief Officer."

  28.48  The report noted also that a Performance Review Panel of five senior members was of importance in the context of top management: it "triggered" projects of a "value for money" or "policy review" type, sometimes using O & M or Audit staff.

  28.49  Mervyn Phillips told us that the only major change after this report was the formation of a new department dealing with both economic development and tourism with a Chief Officer, called the Director of Tourism and Development.

  28.50  Phillips' view was that it was the Chief Executive's role to have oversight of what was happening in the corporate work of the council. In relation to the Social Services Department this was exercised primarily through an annual position statement by the Department, an annual review of its activities and objectives by members and the studies incidental to those procedures. It was the County Secretary's role to observe on behalf of the County Council what was happening in the relevant committees and to report to the Chief Executive any non-compliance with statutory duties not dealt with by a committee: the County Secretary was the monitoring and compliance officer.

  28.51  It follows from what has been said that Phillips relied heavily upon the Director of Social Services and County Secretary and expected to be informed by one or both of them of any significant problems. He met Gledwyn Jones for a talk about twice a month, apart from formal meetings, and he met the County Secretary almost daily. Phillips said "it would be expected that a reference would be made to the Chief Executive if it was the sort of thing that might need the attention of the County Council as opposed to the Social Services Committee".

  28.52  This last answer does reveal a flaw, or at least a potential gap, in the arrangements to enforce accountability of the Director of Social Services to the Chief Executive. The job evaluation report had been less than crystal clear on the subject but a limitation of matters to be reported to the Chief Executive to those that "might need the attention of the County Council as opposed to the Social Services Committee" could itself create uncertainty and confusion. In reality the Chief Executive did expect to be informed by the Director, or if not by him, by the County Secretary, of significant matters that he ought to know. He learned, for example, of the convictions of social services staff when they occurred through the Director or the County Secretary and similarly of the request made by Mr Justice Mars-Jones for an investigation[372]. He would have expected to have been told also, again by way of example, of the report on the Butlins Camp holiday from Park House[373] but that was not brought to his attention.

  28.53  We discuss in Chapter 32 of this report the successive responses of the Social Services Department to the various investigations that took place during the period under review and the reports upon them. In the light of those responses it would appear that the failure to inform the Chief Executive of criticism of the management and practice of the Department was part of a pattern of deliberate non-disclosure; and the result was that monitoring of the performance of the Department and its senior officers by the Chief Executive was ineffective.

  28.54  As Deputy to Gledwyn Jones, John Jevons' understanding was that Mervyn Phillips as Chief Executive expected Chief Officers to manage their own departments and "consume their own smoke". However, when Gledwyn Jones was in hospital in 1987, Jevons did discuss the Mars-Jones request with Mervyn Phillips and it was the latter who decided that the investigation should be carried out by Roger Davies. Jevons did not become Director of Social Services until April 1991, only 15 months before Phillips' retirement and just before the major police investigation began. He said that he did not receive any guidance then from Phillips, or subsequently from Davies, about what he was expected to refer to the Chief Executive. Phillips did not offer regular discussion or supervision and did not expect to be informed of day to day issues.

Comment

  28.55  This is not the place for a detailed critique of the many organisational changes made during the period under review and the failure on the part of senior management to ensure their effective implementation, but some comment relevant to the purposes of our inquiry must be made.

  28.56  The first, and probably the most obvious, comment is that these frequent changes imposed additional burdens on hard pressed staff, who were already having to cope with the major changes in social services departments generally, which we have outlined in Chapter 3 of this report. Moreover, Clwyd had limited resources in child care expertise and experience in its higher administration throughout and the organisational changes tended to dissipate these resources or at least to diminish their impact on the delivery of operational services.

  28.57  Secondly, there were striking anomalies in the various structures from time to time. Thus, Gordon Ramsay was shown as accountable to Iorwerth Thomas as Principal Officer for ten years from 1974 to 1984 (almost until the latter's retirement) but this was never effective. Thomas was experienced in mental health but had no experience of child care and, after some initial visits to children's establishments, he seems to have left Ramsay to get on with his duties without supervising or monitoring him. Iorwerth Thomas was a striking example of a person who never shouldered his assigned responsibilities for children's services and his lack of previous experience in the field was not an adequate excuse for his failure to do so in the course of the decade in which he had the opportunity to acquire the necessary expertise. Moreover, it is a strong criticism of the senior management that this unsatisfactory situation was allowed to continue for such a long time.

  28.58  There were other quite obvious problems about the positions and responsibilities of both Ramsay and Wyatt. Ramsay was responsible for a range of matters in addition to the placement of children: he was, for example, responsible for monitoring the assessment of individuals, the formulation of a strategy for each child and statutory reviews but the residential homes and area officers were both outside his line of responsibility and he had no direct links in the structure with Wyatt. There were meetings in 1975, 1978 and 1983 (and probably more) at which definition or re-definition of Ramsay's roles was discussed but his position remained anomalous until he retired in 1987.

  28.59  The transfer of responsibility for residential homes from headquarters to the areas from 1977 was both ill-timed and inadequately supported. The Area Officers had neither the experience nor the resources to take on the additional responsibility which was particularly onerous in the Wrexham/Maelor area at that time. The appointment of two inspectors at headquarters was no more than a palliative and they themselves were overburdened. Furthermore, the hierarchy of responsibility above the Area Officers became even more confused as the authors of the O & M report pointed out.

  28.60  Some improvements were achieved when that report was implemented but they were comparatively short-lived, partly because of changes of personnel. Able men such as Coley, Jevons and John Llewellyn Thomas were appointed to senior positions but they became involved in future planning and other fields with the result that their abilities were not fully exploited at a practice level in the 1980s in relation to child care.

  28.61  It was unfortunate also that the ultimate divisional structure was adopted at a time when other major changes were required by the provisions of the Children Act 1989 and the regulations under that Act, which came into operation just a year after the structural change. In mitigation it can be said that the changes in 1990 facilitated in the social services field the local government reorganisation that was to follow between 1994 and 1996. But it should have been clear that strong central co-ordination of policies and procedures would be necessary in the child care field and the new structure failed to provide this.

  28.62  A last comment must be that delegation of responsibility without effective accountability and monitoring is likely to be a recipe for disaster. All the evidence that we have heard in the course of the Inquiry suggests that between 1974 and 1991, the period of major abuse, there was little effective accountability or monitoring of performance at the higher levels of Clwyd Social Services Department's administration and that too much responsibility was left in the hands of middle tier officers, with little guidance from above. Some of the problems were drawn to the attention of the Department initially as early as 1978 in the report on the inquiry into Little Acton but little was done before 1991 to resolve them and it seems that both the Chief Executive and the Council remained unaware of the detailed criticisms made in that report and subsequent reports.

Footnotes:

362   See paras 2.02, 2.03 and 2.37.

363   See para 10.91.

364   See para 10.92.

365   See paras 12.21, 13.25 and 14.49.

366   See para 28.13.

367   See para 28.25.

368   Report by Director of Social Services to Clwyd Social Services (Children & Family) Sub-Committee 13 February 1991.

369   Not to be confused with the Jacqueline Thomas who is referred to in paras 14.32 to 14.45.

370   Letter from John Jevons to Michael Barnes dated 6 December 1994.

371   See paras 14.43, 14.44, 25.45, 25.46 and 32.20 for other references to him.

372   See para 14.43.

373   See paras 17.81 to 17.86. It is to be noted, however, that the Little Acton investigation took place at the request of the Chief Executive to the Director of Social Services: see para 12.06.

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