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Introduction

46.01  We have dealt with our approach to this subject in relation to Clwyd, in the context of our terms of reference, in the introductory section of Chapter 31 and we need not repeat what we said there. In Gwynedd, as in Clwyd, the major failings that we have identified were:

(a)  The lack of adequate planning of each child's period in care.

(b)  The absence of any strategic framework for the placement of children in residential care.

(c)  Ineffective reviewing processes and lack of consultation with the child.

(d)  Intermittent and inadequate surveillance by field social workers.

(e)  Failure to establish any co-ordinated system for preparing residents for their discharge from care.

  46.02  It will be necessary to say a few words in this chapter under each of these heads. We will deal also with three other matters of particular relevance to Gwynedd, namely, the response of the Social Services Department to various adverse reports during the period under review, the adequacy of the financial provision made for children's services and the responsibility of county councillors for failings in the quality of care that was provided.

The lack of adequate planning for each child in care

  46.03  In paragraph 33.124 of this report we have listed six main defects in social work practice at Ty'r Felin affecting the quality of care provided and these defects permeated the whole of the residential care provision for children in Gwynedd for most of the period under review. A recurring refrain in the reports and evidence before us has been the absence of assessment or planning before the admission of a child into care. It has not been part of our task to assess the quality of preventive work undertaken before children were received into care but all too often, indeed in the vast majority of cases, children were received into the community homes as emergency cases without individual care plans.

  46.04  As early as 4 March 1979 Nefyn Dodd, as Officer-in-Charge of Ty'r Felin, wrote to Parry, the Deputy Director, complaining of the unprofessional and haphazard way in which he was expected to admit children into that community home as an assessment centre. Yet, over nine years later, Welsh Office SWSOs found that recorded information showed very little evidence of detailed assessment prior to care. "There were no indications of probable outcomes of reception into care or committal to care; appropriate placement; probable lengths of time or other salient indicators of the purpose of care. Reasons for reception into care were always expressed in terms of the situation the children were leaving rather than that to which they were going"[589].

  46.05  Another recurring criticism was that the object of admission into care was often stated to be for assessment without any indication as to what was to be assessed or as to the purpose of the assessment. Thus, residential staff were not given clear guidance and assessment was too frequently seen as a means of providing a solution rather than as an aid to determining options for the child. Bearing in mind the lack of staff trained and experienced in assessment, the outcome of the process was unlikely to be satisfactory and the danger of drift resulting from admission into open-ended care was very real.

The absence of any strategic framework for placements

  46.06  Despite the approval by the Children's Sub-Committee of the policy statement on this subject drafted by Gethin Evans in 1982[590], it appears to have been largely ignored and the remaining community homes became progressively less distinguishable from each other in terms of purpose. Dodd was the supreme arbiter in respect of placements in community homes within the county and his authority was reinforced by his practice of presiding over case conferences, at which his word prevailed. Moreover, in very many cases placements were determined by the availability of accommodation rather than the particular needs of the child.

  46.07  This failure to implement any coherent placement strategy accentuated the risk of drift in care and inevitably diminished the quality of provision for individual children because each home had to provide for a wide range of conflicting behaviour and attitudes. Another adverse consequence was that some children were placed very many miles from their own homes (the distance could be as far as 85 miles), restricting severely the practicability of parental contact and a close relationship with a child's field social worker.

  46.08  The Welsh Office SWSOs who visited Gwynedd in the autumn of 1988 found problems also in relation to boarding out placements, despite the partnership arrangement with the fostering unit at Cartref Bontnewydd, which had by then been in place for about four years[591]. There was divided responsibility and evidence of confusion and poor practice in the boarding out of children, especially from residential care. The SWSOs summarised their views on the boarding out arrangements in the following paragraph

"The evidence was of a placement policy and practice in need of major overhaul. We found hasty or ill-conceived introduction; poor preparation of foster home and child; an absence of agreed objectives and targets; long delays between solution and conclusion; little or no choice of family placement and placement at long distance and/or inappropriate locations."

  The SWSOs concluded that the total amount of social work time committed to the development and support of fostering had almost certainly been reduced under the contractual arrangement rather than increased. These were truly alarming conclusions for a county that was placing heavy emphasis on boarding out as the preferred disposal for children in care.

  46.09  Dafydd Ifans told the Tribunal that it was not until 1993 that guidelines for the selection of a placement were adopted; and it was he who set up an admissions panel to eliminate inappropriate admissions and to select placements. But he said that a consistent failure of the system was that up to 90 per cent of admissions were emergency receptions because of lack of planning in the field and the lack of resources to develop other initiatives so that inappropriate placements still occurred.

Ineffective reviewing processes and lack of consultation with the child

  46.10  It is right to say that in 1988 the Welsh Office SWSOs reported favourably on some aspects of the reviewing process. They found that, at Ty'r Felin and Queens Park, reviews were carried out at regular intervals and were attended by a proper range of staff and representatives from other services such as health and education; and they praised the involvement of the children and their parents in the planning process. On the evidence that they saw "the planning process . . . produced realistic plans to which most of the participants could and did subscribe".

  46.11  Nevertheless, according to the SWSOs, there were two inescapable problems about the process. The first was that it was very difficult to review, in the sense of evaluating success and progress, in the absence of a foundation assessment and care plan. Secondly, there was a lack of effective available resources to follow plans through. The family placement alternative to residential care was in practice repeatedly failing to meet the needs of some children. "Poor foster parent assessment and child matching, inadequate introduction to the foster parent and to the child, impossibly short introductory times and foster home breakdowns after a few months were the experience of many of the children"[592].

  46.12  The criticisms that we heard of the reviewing process earlier in the period under review were much wider than these and were closely linked with the pressures on field social workers. Larry King was involved in monitoring statutory reviews for varied purposes and to a variable extent from 1975 to 1988 and he was critical of the Gwynedd practice in respect of these reviews for a number of reasons. It was not easy to elicit precise answers from him when he gave evidence but it appears that in the first half of his period (that is, when he was reporting to Parry) he visited Area Offices quite frequently to inspect children's files generally. Following Parry's departure, King's duties changed and he no longer bore responsibility for children in residential homes or who were boarded out, but he was responsible, in particular, for out of county placements and for child protection. In this latter phase it was his practice to visit Area Offices about twice per month: one visit would be for the purpose of pursuing child protection issues and the other to inspect the files of those children who were not in Gwynedd community homes and not boarded out. Responsibility for monitoring statutory reviews of children in Gwynedd homes or boarded out rested with Gethin Evans from 1982. Those reviews took place in the community home or the foster home with Dodd usually presiding at reviews in the former and the relevant Team Manager from Area Office at a review in a foster home.

  46.13  King's evidence, both in writing and orally, was that he complained frequently that statutory reviews were not being carried out on time. When asked to what period he was referring in relation to this criticism, he said that it was after he was "taken off the residential sector". Although he mentioned both Parry and Gethin Evans as recipients of his complaints, it appears that they were made mainly to Gethin Evans in the period between 1982 and 1987, that is, when he (King) was not directly responsible for children in residential care. King was in close touch with an administrative officer of many years' experience who held the Child Protection Register at that time and that officer pointed out to him that reviews of children in care were slipping badly, particularly in relation to boarded out children for whom the Anglesey Area office were responsible.

  46.14  An underlying reason for this slippage was undoubtedly lack of financial resources, attested to by many senior officers, leading to recurring shortages of field social workers. There were various freezes on recruitment, the first in 1976 (according to King's recollection) and the position was aggravated by industrial action on several occasions. Thus, there were periods in 1980, 1985/1986 and again in 1987 when files were "stacked" and new children were not allocated to social workers. There were also periods of 'work to rule' when the casework of a previous postholder who had not been replaced would not be undertaken by any colleague. King's successor (Hibbs) found that there was difficulty about the allocation of field social workers to children. Up to 60 children were allocated to a single social worker; there were delays in allocation; and some children in residential care did not have a social worker allocated to them.

  46.15  A separate but central criticism of the reviewing process during the period of almost ten years to 1988 when Dodd dominated the residential sector was that his views on the children in residential care almost invariably prevailed when they were in conflict with those of field workers. There were also inhibitions on the sharing of information about children: some details available in Area files were not disclosed to the community homes, apparently because it was thought that it might affect the attitudes of residential care staff to the children adversely; and, even after King left, Hibbs found that field social workers were not being afforded access to records in the home, having to rely instead on a summary from the head of the home. Hibbs' evidence was that the reports for reviews and the review documents themselves were "skeletal" but that they were the only planning documents in existence.

Intermittent and inadequate surveillance by field social workers

  46.16  We have already mentioned in the preceding section of this chapter some of the difficulties that faced field social workers throughout the period under review in maintaining effective contact with, and surveillance of, the children for whom they were responsible. An additional factor for some of them, in respect of both community homes and some foster homes, was the long distance that it was necessary to travel to see a child; and their difficulties in this respect were aggravated by the imposition of mileage restrictions on the use of their own motor cars. Most seriously of all, Area staff understandably felt that they were being deliberately distanced from the children for whom they were responsible by a combination of organisational and procedural decisions and the overall attitude to them of Nefyn Dodd.

  46.17  In the climate that we have outlined it was inevitable that the important link between field social worker and child in residential care should be weakened; and it is not surprising that the former preferred contact with a child when the latter was home on leave to visiting the child in a community or foster home. Such contact was not an adequate substitute, however, for regular visits in the community or foster home and time spent there alone with the child. The result in evidential terms has been that very few of the former residents of community homes and foster homes within Gwynedd have spoken of a meaningful relationship with their field workers; and the latter were of minimal value as a potential channel of complaint.

  46.18  Headquarters staff were well aware of the unrest amongst Area Officers and their staff about the arrangements in place from 1982 onwards. They were aware also that field workers were not visiting children in the homes as frequently as they should. Both Parry and King gave evidence to this effect and King drew the attention of Areas and individual social workers to this both orally and in writing. Parry's evidence was that the only method of detecting whether a visit had taken place was by analysis by a member of the headquarters staff of the entries in the visitors' book; and Elaine Baxter's conclusion[593] was that either there had been a significant failure to visit the children or the visits had (wrongly) not been recorded.

  46.19  Despite headquarters' knowledge of these failings, no effective action was taken to remedy the position. As we have indicated earlier, Gethin Evans spent the majority of his time in his office and his responsibilities, as Head of Children's Services, included the making of recommendations for action in the light of national and local reports and the production of Departmental Manuals. Gwynedd differed from Clwyd in that the former did produce detailed procedural manuals covering a wide range of activities but they bore little relevance to what occurred on a daily basis on the ground and Gethin Evans conceded that there was no mechanism in place to ensure that staff had access to and read (let alone understood) the manuals.

  46.20  The relevant manual was "Departmental Manual No.2. Child Care", which was revised several times in the course of the 1980s. We were invited to look, in particular, at the section in this manual dealing with Residential Care and the identification and functions of the "Primary Worker with Children in Care"[594]. We found it extremely difficult to interpret in practical terms; it seemed to be designed to secure observance of formal requirements rather than to meet children's needs; and Gethin Evans was forced to concede that a crucial paragraph defining the roles of field and residential social workers in relation to children newly admitted to care was "gobbledegook".

Failure to prepare residents for their discharge from care

  46.21  The loosening of the tie between field social worker and child in residential care was likely to have particularly adverse consequences when the time came for a child to be discharged from care. Even more seriously, however, we have had little evidence of any coherent policy in Gwynedd for preparing children in care for independence.

  46.22  In the earlier part of the period under review it seems that Ty Newydd was intended to play the central role in preparing adolescents for independence. It was opened in 1978 as a hostel for ten "boys" aged 16 to 21 years and was so described in the 1979 Regional Plan for Wales[595]; and it was envisaged that some of them, at least, would be in employment whilst living at Ty Newydd. This provision lasted only about three years, however, and the Dyfed team, who visited the hostel in July and August 1981, were appalled by its physical state[596].

  46.23  When Ty Newydd re-opened as a community home in 1982, it was said to be intended to provide accommodation for children in a wide age range up to 18 years but the view expressed by Gethin Evans in his 1982 strategy document entitled "Residential Work with Children" was that Ty Newydd would provide for the younger age range of children; and this document was subsequently approved by the Children's Sub-Committee[597]. Ty Newydd was said to lack "private space", which was important for the adolescent. According to this document, all homes would seek to provide short term care primarily for the 12-17 age group with the objective that residents could either be re-integrated into their own families or, when this was not possible, integrated into the community, either on a permanent or semi-permanent basis, through a foster home, supervised lodging or private accommodation.

  46.24  Within Gethin Evans' strategy the community home that would prepare adolescents for independent living was to be Y Gwyngyll, which had opened in 1979 and had accommodation for 16 boys and girls. This was to be the main focus of the unit and Gethin Evans had in mind that social links were to be forged with the careers' service, local employers and the private and public housing sectors with the assistance of field workers; and other Area staff were to be involved in group work with adolescents.

  46.25  This description of Y Gwyngyll's role was not in accord with the Regional Plan, which was already obsolete or obsolescent. More importantly, however, Y Gwyngyll never fulfilled that role, as far as we are aware. The design of the community home included bed-sitting accommodation for two school leavers but not even this was used for the purpose for which it was designed[598]. The home and its administration were robustly criticised by the Dyfed team in 1981 and it closed in 1986.

  46.26  In the result we have found no evidence of a continuing strategy for adolescents leaving care in the 1980s. When eventually, towards the end of that decade, a "Handbook for Children in Residential Care" was produced[599], it did contain a short final section on "Leaving Care" but it was in bland general terms. On the subject of preparation, for example, it said:

"Some (children) will grow up in a Community Home and one day move out and live by themselves. All young people need to learn how to manage cooking, money, shopping, simple household chores, repairs. Staff in the Community Home will be able to help you with these things, make sure that they do."

  We have not received any evidence, of specific instructions to members of residential care staff on this subject or of any programme to prepare residents for independence.

  46.27  The Welsh Office investigation in 1992 of outcomes for children leaving care in three Welsh counties[600] did not include Gwynedd so that we do not have before us the kind of detailed analysis that we have in respect of Clwyd. We are satisfied, however, that a similar investigation in Gwynedd at the time would have presented an equally bleak picture. Dafydd Ifans, the last Principal Officer with line management responsibility for the three remaining community homes from March 1993, recalled when giving evidence to the Tribunal that a researcher from the University of Wales, Swansea, was commissioned in 1994/1995 to interview a number of young people who had left care in Gwynedd in order to obtain their views on the service that they had received but we have not seen the report that she presented.

  46.28  It was not until nearly the end of the period under review that Gwynedd's Departmental Manual No 2 included detailed guidance on the preparation of children for leaving care, drafted by Ifans in the light of the requirements of section 24 of the Children Act 1989 and the Welsh Office report on its Inspection of Outcomes for Children Leaving Care. Under the heading of Aftercare in the section dealing with Adolescent Services[601] a detailed procedure for the preparation of children was set out, including the completion by each child (with any necessary assistance) on reaching the age of 15 years, of answers to a comprehensive questionnaire. It included provision also for a compulsory Leaving Care Planning Meeting at that stage, attended by relevant family members and representatives of all the relevant services, including Housing, Careers and Benefit agencies.