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44.31  The proposed new structure provided for four Assistant Directors in all, including those for the two divisions but excluding Parry's obsolescent post. The Assistant Directors for Menai and Llyn/Eryri were to be accountable not only for the work of the Areas within each division but also for the line management of the headquarters based Principal Officers who would retain specialist responsibilities for particular client groups. In relation to children services, the Assistant Director (Menai) was to manage two Principal Officers responsible respectively for Children's Residential Services, including residential and day care establishments, and Children's Other Services (including Adoption). The two other Assistant Directors were to be an Assistant Director (Development) and an Assistant Director (Resources and Support). The latter post was to carry responsibility for the control of resources such as finance, manpower and the use of buildings but was also to involve responsibility for private and voluntary establishments (including the operation of the Registered Homes Act 1984) through a Principal Officer and an Administrative Officer. It is to be noted also that the allocation of responsibilities between the Principal Officers in the Children's Section did not incorporate the ideas that Gethin Evans had put forward, with the two divisions in mind, in a memorandum written in April 1983.

  44.32  This new structure operated from April 1987 and remained in being until April 1992[568], but responsibility for the development of children's services was to be assigned to the Assistant Director (Resources and Support) rather than Assistant Director (Development). Gethin Evans was appointed to the former of these two posts.

  44.33  The new Assistant Director (Menai) with responsibility for the Children's Section was Robert Evans, who had been Area Officer for Aberconwy since 5 November 1984 and who had to shoulder that responsibility for a further four or five months after taking up the post of Assistant Director. Robert Evans was a graduate in Social Sciences of Leicester University, who had obtained the CQSW in 1976. By 1984 he had had over ten years experience of social work in Northamptonshire and Dorset and had served as a Team Manager (with the pay of a Principal Officer) in the latter county. When restructuring took place in 1992, he became Assistant Director (Mental Health) and he held that position until he left local government on 31 March 1996, when he was about to become 45 years old. He was not a fluent Welsh speaker and he considered that his chances of obtaining a post in local government commensurate with his professional skills and experience were almost non-existent.

  44.34  The two Principal Officers accountable to Robert Evans in child care matters initially were Larry King[569] and Nefyn Dodd. King, who was designated Principal Officer (Child Protection), retired on 14 May 1988 and was succeeded by Peter James Hibbs from 1 August 1988. Hibbs had been brought up at Colwyn Bay until the age of 15 years, when he went to boarding school, and had graduated in 1973 in Sociology at the South Bank Polytechnic. After serving the Inner London Education Authority for four years as an Education Welfare Officer he had taken the CQSW course at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he obtained also a Diploma in Social Studies. Hibbs had then joined Gwynedd Social Services Department on 10 December 1979 as a member of the Child Care Team at the Anglesey Area Office and had been promoted to Senior Social Worker on 1 November 1985, after taking an O level in Welsh in 1984. When Dodd retired from his position as Principal Officer (Children's Residential Services) on 23 May 1990, Hibbs succeeded him and retained the post of Principal Officer until he himself retired on the ground of ill health on 8 January 1993. It seems, however, that he was responsible for residential services only briefly. As soon as he took over from Dodd the post was re-designated as Principal Officer (Adolescent Services), with responsibility for residential services, youth justice and leaving care; but Hibbs' wife died on 4 November 1990, after a long illness, and he was so badly affected by depression that he was found by the medical officer to be unable to carry on working after 1 December 1990. Hibbs estimates that he was only able to attend work for about eight months in all in the course of 1991 and 1992. Since November 1995 he has been a senior practitioner at a Family Centre based in Rhyl, which is run by the National Children's Homes.

  44.35  It is unnecessary to go into other organisational details at any length because, with few isolated exceptions, the complaints that we have had to consider have related to events prior to 1992 and the major police investigation began in 1991. In the 1987 structure there was another Principal Officer with child responsibilities but his field was Community Support; and there were also officers responsible for Adoptions and for Children's Placement (Special Needs) but they did not play a part in the relevant history as far as we are concerned.

  44.36  During the period when Robert Evans bore line management responsibility for the Children's Section his actual involvement in the work was comparatively slight because of the pressure of other work upon him. He told the Tribunal in his written statement that he was instructed very early on that, following a Health Advisory Service inspection of 1986, which was very critical of mental health services in the county, and in view of the need to plan for closure of large psychiatric hospitals, the development of mental health services must be seen as a priority. In Evans' view they achieved this so successfully that these services in the county were recognised as one of the leading community based services in Europe.

  44.37  In the event the new structure does not appear to have achieved the desired effect of clarifying and tightening line management. Hibbs, for example, said in his oral evidence that, on becoming a Principal Officer, he worked more directly to Gethin Evans than to Robert Evans, his line manager; and he had little contact with either the Deputy Director or the Director. His impression of the latter two was that they were remote and that they were occupied with other procedures. On the other hand, he saw Gethin Evans almost daily. As for Robert Evans, Hibbs saw him about once a week but Hibbs was uncertain whether he grasped child protection issues and regarded him as a mental health specialist. In 1988, Welsh Office SWSOs commented that the distribution of duties between these two Assistant Directors was not formally defined and said that they were puzzled as to how responsibilities were shared. They noted also that only one of the three relevant Principal Officer posts was filled at the time of their inspection.

  44.38  Between 1988 and 1990 Hibbs spent a significant amount of his time dealing with child protection matters, as had King before him. He was not, therefore, directly concerned with the findings and recommendations of the SWSOs who visited Ty'r Felin and Queens Park in the autumn of 1988[570]. It is surprising, however, that he was not even shown a copy of the inspectors' report when he succeeded to Nefyn Dodd's responsibilities in respect of residential services in 1990 (he did not see it until it was shown to him by his Counsel in the course of the Tribunal's proceedings). His comments about it in his oral evidence were that he did not take issue with anything in it and that it gave a fair description of the position at that time.

  44.39  Gethin Evans did not have direct line management responsibility for children's services in the period from 1987 to 1992; he was, however, responsible for the development of children's services, as we have said earlier. He must, therefore, have been closely involved in preparations for implementation of the Children Act 1989 from the moment when it was published as a Bill; and prior to that he must have been consulted quite frequently about child care matters as the recent Head of the Children's Section. He resumed direct line management responsibility for it in 1992.

  44.40  The final major reorganisation of the Social Services Department implemented in April 1992 involved abandonment of line management arrangements based upon two divisions. The Area Officers became accountable again to the Deputy Director of Social Services and there was a headquarters team of five Assistant Directors responsible respectively for "specialist" fields such as mental health, mental handicap, and community care.

  44.41  The new Assistant Director (Children), Gethin Evans, had a team of five (later four) working under him at headquarters and these included Hibbs (Adolescent Services) and an officer responsible for Child Protection. When Hibbs retired formally on 8 January 1993 he was replaced two months later by Dafydd Ifans, who had worked in the North Wales Probation Service for the preceding 10 years, after obtaining the CQSW at Cartrefle College and an Open University degree. He had served for 15 years in the Army (rising to Sergeant), on leaving school at the age of 15 years to become an army apprentice; and he had then been an ASDA manager for two years before turning to social work. Ifans remained with Gwynedd until 31 December 1995 when he became Service Manager, Children and Family Services, for Conwy County Borough Council.

  44.42  During his period of nearly three years as a Principal Officer with Gwynedd Ifans was the line manager responsible for the three remaining community homes for children, namely, Ty'r Felin, Queens Park and Cartref Bontnewydd. In addition he had an advisory role in relation to youth justice, leaving care and homeless young people. But he found that there were still line management problems involving the relationships between Area Managers (as they had become), the specialist Assistant Directors and the Deputy Director, despite an attempt by the Director of Social Services to clarify the position by a memorandum dated 29 July 1992. Following his arrival, Ifans himself submitted a memorandum to the Director on the role of Principal Officers, after discussing it with other Principal Officers in the team in which he was working, with the object of clarifying the relationship of Principal Officers to Area Managers and according some line manager responsibility to the former. This led to a meeting with the Director, who undertook to consider the matter further, but no action resulted before the counties were reorganised.

The role of the Chief Executive

  44.43  Gwynedd County Council had three Chief Executives successively during the 22 years of its existence. They were David Evan Alun Jones (1974 to 1980), Ioan Bowen Rees (1980 to 1991) and Huw Vaughan Thomas (1991 to 1996).

  44.44   (David) Alun Jones, a solicitor, came to Gwynedd with substantial local government experience in England and Wales, most recently as Deputy Clerk (1952 to 1961) and then Clerk of Denbighshire County Council for 13 years. After graduating in Law at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, he had served in various solicitor posts in Ilford, Southampton, Berkshire and Surrey before moving to Denbighshire; and he left Gwynedd to become the Commissioner for Local Administration in Wales for five years until his retirement in 1985.

  44.45  In his written statement to the Tribunal Alun Jones emphasised the serious financial position of Gwynedd County Council from the outset, at a time when Gwynedd had the second highest number of low-income households of all county councils in England and Wales. The lack of financial resources was due partly to dilution of the "sparsity element" of the Rate Support Grant formula and partly to the lower than expected fund balances inherited from the predecessor authorities. Nevertheless, in 1974 Gwynedd was the third highest county in terms of expenditure per thousand population. The responsible panel concerned with the Council's resources considered that a substantial rise in the rate precept would be unacceptable, bearing in mind the marked poverty, high unemployment and high proportion of elderly people in the county. Moreover, the Government instructed local authorities to adopt a policy of nil growth in 1975/1976 and thereafter to reduce expenditure. Thus, throughout Alun Jones' period as Chief Executive, Gwynedd was unable to relax its belt tightening attitude over the whole field of its services; but he said that he had no reason to believe that the children's service was seriously underfunded, although the expenditure on social services as a whole was by no means generous, a plight shared by all the other services at the time.

  44.46  The new County Council was launched with a staff that was 250 short of its establishment figure of 1178 and it was still 120 below strength at the end of 1974. Alun Jones described his position as that of a "free standing" Chief Officer without an executive department directly responsible to him. His staff, including a personal assistant and a secretary, totalled only four initially and was later reduced to three. He did not, as a rule, attend meetings of service committees or their sub-committees: they were attended by the County Secretary and Solicitor or by one of his Assistant Solicitors. As for the Social Services Department, the staffing structure was that recommended by management consultants and Alun Jones believes that it reflected, largely, the staff complements of the predecessor authorities at Area level.

  44.47  During Alun Jones' period as Chief Executive, responsibility for formal performance reviews was assigned to the General Purposes Committee but they do not appear to have been carried out in his time. In his view monitoring of the functions of all service departments was the responsibility of the relevant committees before 1980 and he regarded the Social Services Committee as particularly well equipped in this respect because both its Chairman and its Vice-Chairman were highly competent and extremely hard working.

  44.48  Alun Jones did not enlarge in his statement upon his view of the relationship between the Chief Executive and the Chief Officers of the various Departments. Such evidence as we have on the subject does not suggest that it was the practice of the Director of Social Services, T E Jones, to discuss problems relating to children or the community homes with Alun Jones; and we have no reason to think that the latter was aware of any complaints by residents. It is probable that T E Jones did complain to him from time to time about inadequate financial resources, as did all the other Chief Officers, but Alun Jones does not recall that children's services were ever pin-pointed as in special need.

  44.49  Alun Jones was consulted by the Director of Social Services about the alleged failings of Parry as Deputy Director of Social Services in or about late 1974 and was involved in the subsequent discussions. After Ebsworth had investigated the matter, Alun Jones' own opinion was that Parry's services should be dispensed with but the view of the Chairman of the Social Services Committee (formerly of Anglesey County Council) that Parry should be made responsible for children's services prevailed.

  44.50   Ioan Bowen Rees was County Secretary and Solicitor of Gwynedd County Council from its inception so that he was very familiar with its management structure and personalities when he succeeded Alun Jones as Chief Executive in 1980, at the age of 51 years. A native of Dolgellau, he had graduated in Modern History at Oxford after national service and had then served his articles with the Clerk of the Denbighshire County Council. Following his admission as a solicitor in March 1956, he had served in various capacities in local government in Lancashire, Cardiff and Pembrokeshire, latterly as Deputy Clerk of the County Council before reorganisation. In his later career Bowen Rees was very well known outside Gwynedd, serving on many public bodies, and he was regarded as an authority on local government: he was awarded the Haldane Medal by the Royal Institute of Public Administration in 1969 and an honorary LLD by the University of Wales in 1997, amongst other honours. He was also a mountaineer and author of several books. It is sad to record that he died early in May 1999.

  44.51  Bowen Rees' terms of appointment referred to him as head of the Council's paid service, having "authority over all other Officers so far as this is necessary for the efficient management and execution of the Council's functions". He was also stated to be leader of the Officers' management team and, through the appropriate Committees, the Council's principal adviser on matters of general policy. In his oral evidence to the Tribunal, however, he agreed that Chief Officers were allowed their heads to run their own departments. He had no choice in the matter because it was the Council's choice: the Chairmen (that is, the admirable and the less admirable) and the Chief Officers, in combination, ran their departments. It was a federation, even a confederation, rather than a unified state.

  44.52  In another passage of his evidence Bowen Rees explained that, in his view, Gwynedd was unique because there was no political party in power. It was a council of Independents in the main and the departmental committees were the important committees, with Chairmen tending to respect one another's fiefdom. Bowen Rees' difficulty as Chief Executive was that there was no Leader of the Council. There was a Policy and Resources Committee but it was not until a late stage that he had a Chairman of that Committee who was prepared to take a corporate lead. A Priorities Sub-Committee of the Policy and Resources Committee was set up in 1986 and by 1989 a Policy Unit had been established under the Chief Executive. But the financial situation throughout the 1980s caused a feeling of helplessness in the face of repeated losses of grant and left no room for manoeuvre.

  44.53  During Bowen Rees' period the management team of ten heads of departments met once a month; and there were larger meetings once a quarter, attended by six other minor departmental heads, such as the County Valuer. Bowen Rees' feeling was that they were a team who got on well together and that they did share problems. He tried to give a lead on some matters but the departmental committee culture was a problem.

  44.54  Despite the continuing difficulties that we have outlined very briefly, it appears that Bowen Rees was more interventionist in Social Services Department matters than his predecessor had been. Thus, he was told of the complaints about Y Gwyngyll in 1981; he asked Ebsworth and a senior solicitor to provide a report to him and he visited Y Gwyngyll, Ty'r Felin and Queens Park himself at the time. It was on his initiative that Dyfed County Council was asked to provide a team to inquire and report; and he played an active part in the decision making in relation to Parry after the report had been received, although the Council panel took a different view from him on Parry's future. Other matters in the report were left to the Social Services Department to deal with but he regarded the suggestion that T E Jones did not take any interest in children's services as unjustified to his own knowledge.

  44.55  Bowen Rees was also aware in 1983/1984 of comments by the County Treasurer on the low funding for children's services but Bowen Rees satisfied himself that this was largely attributable to the Council's policy of boarding out children whenever it was possible to do so. Only ten per cent of the children being looked after were in children's homes and the boarding out policy saved a great deal of expenditure. He said that by 1989 Gwynedd had the highest proportion in Wales of children boarded out and the second highest in Great Britain. On the other hand, Gwynedd was spending more than any other county in Wales on elderly people.

  44.56  Other Social Services Department matters in which Bowen Rees took particular interest subsequently were the police investigation arising from Alison Taylor's complaints and the 1987 restructuring of the Department. He told the Tribunal that he had very little recollection of the events surrounding the police investigation by the time that he gave evidence to us but that he had asked Lucille Hughes to get in touch with him when the inquiry was over. When she did so, she was "over the moon"; she told him that there were to be no proceedings and that there was no substance in the allegations. Bowen Rees wanted to know whether, irrespective of what the police did, there was a need for disciplinary proceedings; and he claimed to have satisfied himself about this, without further discussion with Lucille Hughes, by speaking to one or more senior police officers. In the event he issued statements (much criticised) to the press early in November 1986 to the effect that the police report had completely vindicated the decision by the County Council not to suspend any officer during the investigation[571]. He had not been fully aware of Nefyn Dodd's dual role at the time and he had been told that Alison Taylor was worse than a troublemaker.

  44.57  Bowen Rees thought that Lucille Hughes was unfortunate in her Chairman during the mid 1980s, who was very wilful and tolerated only because of his war record. Hughes had not brought to him any management problems in relation to children as such but he had been involved in discussions about the restructuring of the Social Services Department into divisions with associated sub-committees. Bowen Rees opposed this proposal and was disappointed when the Council backed the Social Services Committee and not him.

  44.58   Huw Vaughan Thomas came to Gwynedd as Chief Executive on 24 April 1991, at the age of 42 years, with a different background from his predecessors. Having spent his early years at Abertridwr in Mid Glamorgan, he graduated in Modern History at Durham University and then took a master's degree in Administrative Sciences at City University before entering the Civil Service. Thereafter he served in the Department of Employment or on bodies associated with that Department: he was Private Secretary to two successive Ministers of Employment and then head of the Manpower Service Commission's employment rehabilitation programme for disabled people before moving to Wales in May 1988 as Director of the Training Agency, Wales. Since the further reorganisation of local government in Wales he has been the Chief Executive of Denbighshire County Council and he holds numerous other appointments on public bodies in Wales.

  44.59  Thomas faced many difficulties during his comparatively short period of office as Chief Executive, not the least of these being the imminent reorganisation of local government, but he effected a number of important structural improvements; and his written evidence to the Tribunal was instructive. On his arrival he found that the resources available to him as Chief Executive were smaller than those available to other County Chief Executives and that management techniques such as appraisal and performance reviews were present only in a rudimentary form. There were no less than 15 Chief Officers and the relationship between Chief Executive and Chief Officers was still an out-dated version of "primus inter pares". Councillors were too involved in detailed aspects of staff management rather than broader policy and the allocation of resources owed much to history and political considerations rather than an assessment of need. The Council had an image of "fortress Gwynedd" with a single Welsh language agenda.

  44.60  Thomas set about making such improvements as were practicable after extensive discussions. He restructured his own department to provide some broader strategic planning and gave priority to attempting to introduce more modern management techniques. He successfully recommended the establishment of a Sub-Committee of the Council's Policy Committee to vet departmental/committee proposals and to encourage re-distribution of resources alongside necessary budget reductions. This became in 1993 a standing Audit Sub-Committee. Thomas was anxious also to encourage participation by middle management in formulating the strategic agenda and to ensure that there were effective complaints procedures but, whereas middle managers were enthusiastic about these measures, the response of individual Chief Officers was variable. He found that within the Social Services Department there was an initial lack of readiness to consider whether changes were necessary to current procedures and practices and repeated approaches were often needed before a response was received.

44.61  Major difficulties during Thomas' period were that for most of the first three years a wide investigation by the police into the Gwynedd residential homes and ancillary matters was taking place and that, once the main part of the investigation had been completed, the shadow of local government reorganisation loomed very large. These developments restricted the Chief Executive's scope for action in relationship to the Social Services Department. Thus, for example, he received a letter from Alison Taylor in September 1991, shortly before the HTV television programme appeared on 26 September 1991[572], requesting a meeting to discuss allegations of ill-treatment of children in care. Having taken advice, Thomas replied to the effect that she should get in touch with him if she had any new matters not already investigated to report; but shortly afterwards Gwynedd asked the police to investigate the allegations made in the television programme. Alison Taylor did write again pressing for a meeting about the dossier that she had prepared but Thomas declined to meet her on the advice of the Council's legal officers and the Chief Constable. There were problems also due to the suspension of staff during the police investigation and civil actions brought against the Council by former children in care.

  44.62  Nevertheless, relevant initiatives were taken when they were practicable. Thomas said in his statement that the inquiry into the case of M[573] was set up under Dr Ronald Walton only after repeated insistence by Thomas to the police and to the Welsh Office that Gwynedd had a responsibility to carry out its own inquiry, whatever other developments might take place. The result was that the report of the inquiry was presented to the Children's Sub-Committee on 26 June 1995. Somewhat similarly, an inquiry by O and K Associates was commissioned by the Director of Social Services in September 1994: that investigation was into the circumstances surrounding the theft of a diary belonging to a former resident of Ty'r Felin and into other allegations involving staff and residents at that community home[574]. The report was dated 14 February 1995 and was an important factor in the subsequent decision to close Ty'r Felin. Thomas said also that he wrote to the new Chairman of the Social Services Committee in August and September 1994 suggesting priorities for her in relation to performance review and finance for children's services in the light of a report by an internal working party on a County strategy for children's services.

Comments

  44.63  Although we have outlined quite frequent organisational changes that were made during the period under review, it is clear that a very small headquarters team took active responsibility for child care matters on a day to day basis throughout. By early 1976 the effective Head of the Children's Section was Parry, who retained the title of Deputy Director, and under him the main figure was King as Senior (later Principal) Officer (Children). That remained the position until 1981 but, from 1978 onwards, Nefyn Dodd became a third figure in the hierarchy, initially replacing the Homes Officer on a temporary basis, but becoming in 1980/1981 Co-ordinator/Supervisor and placement officer in relation to all the surviving community homes. This development appears to have been the brainchild of Parry originally but it survived Parry's removal from child care matters, despite strong criticism by the Dyfed team in 1981.

  44.64  The major changes in 1981 were the assignment of Parry to other duties and the emergence of Lucille Hughes and Gethin Evans as the leading officers responsible for children. Hughes, however, had a wide range of other duties as Principal Assistant Director and left day to day matters to Gethin Evans, who assumed increasing responsibilities that were formally recognised in June 1982 with his designation as Head of Children's Services. Hughes' active involvement was much the same as that of the first Director and it did not change to any material extent when she herself became the Director of Social Services from 1 October 1983. Moreover, it was Gethin Evans who underpinned Nefyn Dodd's position in the structure by emphasising the latter's role as line manager and discouraging direct access by Officers-in-Charge to headquarters. King, on the other hand, was largely side-lined in relation to the county's residential homes until his retirement in 1988, although he remained responsible for out of county placements and, more significantly, for child protection; and it was Dodd who became Principal Officer (Residential Care--Children) from October 1985. Glanville Owen was Deputy Director from April 1984 but his experience had been in fieldwork and he did not intervene in residential home matters unless specifically asked to do so.

  44.65  The radical re-organisation that took place in 1987, when the county was divided into two divisions for operational purposes, was opposed by the Chief Executive at the time and proved to be unsuccessful. Under it lead responsibility for children's services was assigned to Robert Evans as Assistant Director (Menai) but Gethin Evans appears to have continued to act as adviser and consultant to the new Principal Officer, Hibbs, who succeeded King in 1988 and then Dodd in 1990, but who was only briefly effective because of his wife's fatal illness followed by his own breakdown.

  44.66  In the final period from 1992 Gethin Evans was once more formally in charge of children's services as Assistant Director (Children) with a new Principal Officer responsible for children and adolescent services, Ifans, under him from March 1993. Ifans had no previous experience of children's homes but he was the line manager for the remaining three community homes, one of which (Ty'r Felin) closed in the autumn of 1995.

  44.67  In our judgment the Children's Section was seriously undermanned for most of the period under review and there was no adequate supervision or monitoring of its performance. It may be said that these deficiencies were due, at least in part, to lack of resources and the prolonged illnesses of some senior officers and principal officers. These explanations do not, however, excuse the Social Services Department's failure to institute and maintain an effective system of line management for its community homes and effective arrangements for the care and protection of children. The enlarged role of Dodd was initially a makeshift measure but it was wrongly extended and enhanced, despite fully justified criticism, with the result that he was permitted to dominate residential homes for children and placements in the county for a decade, during which the county had no comprehensible strategy for residential services for children. Councillors and successive Directors of Social Services appear to have been pre-occupied with services for the elderly and the mentally handicapped at the expense of those for children in their care; and it was only in the late stages that coherent attempts were being made to put children's services on a sound footing.

Footnotes:

560   See paras 46.36 to 46.44.

561   See para 7 of Appendix 2 to SWSO Copleston's undated report of her visit to Y Gwyngyll.

562   See para 33.22.

563   For Dodd's background, see paras 10.148 to 10.150, 13.21, 13.22 and Chapter 33.

564   See paras 33.23 and 33.24.

565   See para 33.25.

566   In section 4 of that report.

567   See para 44.18

568   This appears to be the correct date, although some of the witnesses said that it ended earlier.

569   See para 44.09.

570   See paras 33.52 to 33.55 and 36.48.

571   See paras 2.12 to 2.17.

572   See para 2.24.

573   See paras 40.10, 40.11 and Chapter 41.

574   See paras 33.126 to 33.130.