THE councillor responsible for the county’s children’s services today (January 18) denied that there has been a culture of misleading judges at Herefordshire Council.

Children and families cabinet member Elissa Swinglehurst rejected the suggestion at a special public meeting held by the local authority to probe the failures that led to two recent damning judgments about children’s services.

In November, a High Court judge found that the council had provided ‘woeful’ care for two half-sisters and failed to put them up for adoption.

And in a second case, Mr Justice Keehan said twins were put up for adoption separately based on ‘erroneous’ information.

The council has apologised to those affected and fully accepts the judgments.

Speaking at the meeting, Conservative councillor Swinglehurst did, however, conceed that there had been specific incidents of misleading but not a culture of such.

“There is no evidence to suggest that there has been a culture of misleading judges,” she said in a response to a public question which asked what had been done to tackle the issue.

“The AB case was taken to court by officers to allow the court to discharge the order rather than letting it lapse.

“This ensured that the court had oversight of the matter. This question has not been raised by judges themselves, nor by Ofsted or the Local Government Association following external inspections or reviews they have carried out.

“Many cases over a number of years have been before the courts and agreed without issue.

“Mr Justice Keehan made comments about specific cases and on practice, including noting the ‘open and forthright manner in which they [the Director for Children and Families, and the Assistant Director Safeguarding and Family Support] have responded to the diverse criticism made’.”

Independent councillor Chris Chappell criticised the previous lack of openness at the council in explaining the recent failures to the public.

He said that it was shameful that it took a request from nine councillors from different parties to make the council hold an extraordinary council meeting.

It’s Our County co-leader Liz Harvey said she wanted to see improvements in social care herself rather than receive verbal assurances of what is being done.

She also said she was horrified to read that the then head of the council’s independent reviewing officer service was threatened with disciplinary action by the then assistant director if she sought independent legal advice on a matter of concern.

Coun Harvey called for councillors and the public to be informed of the outcome of a whistle-blowing investigation which is currently underway.

A council spokesperson said in a statement after the meeting that the authority remains committed to providing high standards of service to children and young people and their families.

“Following this meeting the council will share the actions with Ofsted and with the scrutiny task group as part of the overall improvement plan,” she said.

“This will provide assurance that the council had taken action to address the issues prior to the publication of the judgments, and plans had been put in place to ensure the ongoing improvement in the council’s children’s safeguarding services.

“It is important to note that there has been and is a lot of good work carried out by Herefordshire Council’s children’s services.

“An Ofsted inspection in June 2018, highlighted a number of areas of work where this is the case, as well as areas for improvement.”