Panorama highlights problems with children’s services

This week’s Panorama programme highlighted yet again the stress and
pressure put on social workers in children’s services.

Councils year on year have to find cost savings: here in Hertfordshire the
solution was to replace social workers with case workers. Case workers are
not trained in social care but trained by the council to manage cases. This
practice has now stopped but recruiting social workers is proving difficult
so the situation has not improved.

Chris White, Liberal Democrat group leader, said: ‘We have been highlighting
this issue for years. We need well paid, well trained, highly qualified
social workers to protect our most vulnerable children. This year the
Liberal Democrats supported the proposals to increase funding for social
workers but also added yet more money to the budget for increases in social
workers’ pay.

‘Sadly this was rejected by the Conservatives and Labour.’

You can see Panorama on BBC iplay: http://tiny.cc/oUQSn

Are your children using soap?

Liberal Democrats have contacted Herts County Council to urge that advice to schools include a check on whether soap is being provided in school toilets.

Some schools do not provide soap because of their past experience about what happens to soap in the hands of boisterous teenagers. But with medical advice clearly being that we should all wash our hands regularly, it is urgent to review policies and ensure that soap is now provided.

The same of course applies in all other workplaces and we would suggest that everyone be prepared to challenge employers, the managers of licensed premises and all other public places when soap is not in evidence.

Fix 2: Will parent power really influence councils over school standards?

Commentary by Chris White

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The Prime Minister is expected today to announce new powers for parents in primary schools over secondary school standards. Councils might be forced to act in response to primary school parents who have not been able to get a place at a school of their choice.

Certainly any move to break the log jam on school standards is welcome: the Thatcherite reforms, continued by this Government, have meant that schools have astonishing levels of autonomy, when you consider that they are spending our money. This can work well when there is good leadership from headteachers and their team. But when things start to go wrong the role of local authorities, once clearly in charge of schools and accountable to you and me, has become unclear.

Even with recent new legislation giving back to local education authorities the power and duty to look after school standards, intervention is often too slow and too mild. Meanwhile parents attempt to vote with their feet – but find that there is too little slack in the system for them to choose to send their children to alternative schools.

We do need the ability to challenge the inertia of bodies like Hertfordshire County Council. Local county councillors, who know local schools and talk daily to local people, are almost entirely excluded from the system with the result that we have the absurd situation in which one man – a councillor from Letchworth whom none of us has elected – has the key decision-making role over local schools in St Albans.

That role should be removed from him and his ilk and be given back to local people and their chosen representatives.

Chris appears on BBC 1’s Politics Show

Chris was on the Politics Show yesterday talking about the local elections. If you are interested follow the link below. Local elections feature after about 31 minutes.

The Conservatives are attempting to shift the blame over their road maintenance performance to Government funding. Readers who have crossed into other counties will have noticed, of course, that roads are dramatically better in other authorities.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00k8x2n/The_Politics_Show_East_03_05_2009/

Yellow Pages can now be recycled

Note from the District Council

St Albans City & District Council is pleased to let residents know that
they can now recycle their Yellow Pages.

The new Yellow Pages are due to be delivered across the district in
April and the Council would like all old copies to be recycled.
Residents are asked to put their old copies in their paper recycling box
for collection as usual on their collection day.

For more information and advice on recycling visit
www.recyclingforapremier.com ,
email client.services@stalbans.gov.uk or telephone the Customer Contact
Centre on 01727 819285.

Letter from PCT updating on swine flu preparations

Dear colleague

The national media is giving extensive coverage to the swine flu situation and there is a lot of information available to the public through the Department of Health and Health Protection Agency. What we wanted to do was to present our key stakeholders with an outline of the position here in Hertfordshire.

For some years now, we have been working hard on a local level to draw up robust plans to deal with an occurrence of pandemic flu. This planning has seen us here in the PCTs working closely with a range of partners across the county, including Hertfordshire County Council, the police service, fire service, colleagues in local councils together with acute Trusts and other health providers. And now we are putting these plans into action. The Local Resilience Forum has convened a strategic co-ordinating group that is chaired by the PCT and meeting twice-weekly, working effectively to co-ordinate our approach.

There is a high level of preparedness here for the situation we find ourselves in and each day teams of staff are working together to ensure that as the disease moves into different phases, we are in a very strong position to protect and to treat the people of Hertfordshire as required. This involves, for example, liaising with HPA and our colleagues at the Strategic Health Authority to secure the appropriate quantities of antiviral drugs and arranging for their storage and distribution.

Other procurement issues we are handling include ensuring we have sufficient quantities of masks and other protective equipment for our health professionals Our GP colleagues are crucial to the success of our operation and so we are providing them with regular briefings and a contact point for all their queries and issues.

Communication with the public is so important during times such as these. We are providing regularly updated material on our website and working with partners across the county so that they too are providing useful information and in a consistent way. We are also finding our local media helpful in covering the key messages including those that concern what everyone as individuals can do to prevent infection. We will continue to send out appropriate communications to our wide range of audiences as matters unfold.

At the time of writing there were no confirmed cases in Hertfordshire and whilst we hope this remains the case, we also know that this situation may well change in the coming weeks. On a positive note, we are confident that, with continued joint working with our partners, we will handle any escalation in severity effectively.

If you do want to know more, our websites contain additional information and the HPA site is very comprehensive and contains a wealth of useful material.

www.wherts-pcts.nhs.uk
www.enherts-pct.nhs.uk
www.hpa.org.uk

With best wishes

Dr Jane Halpin
Director of Public Health

New waiting restrictions in St Peter’s and Clarence wards

The District Council’s Car Parking Working Party has been looking at te following. Please contact your district councillors if you have any particulara concerns.

LOCATION 1 – WATSON WALK

NEW PARKING RESTRICTIONS

No Parking on Footways or Verges – At Any Time

Watson Walk (Both sides)
For its entire length

LOCATION 5 – ST PETER’S CLOSE

RESCIND EXISTING PARKING RESTRICTIONS

8.30 am to 6.30 pm Monday To Saturday

St Peter’s Close (North East, East, North West, South West, and South Sides)
From the south east wall of 109 St Peter’s Street north-westwards,
northwards, north westwards, south westwards, south eastwards, eastwards
and south eastwards to include the turning head for 115 metres to 1.5 metres
south east of the boundary between 4 and 5 St Peter’s Close.

NEW PARKING RESTRICTIONS

NO PARKING AT ANY TIME

St Peter’s Close (North East, East, North West, South West and South Sides)
From the south east wall of 109 St Peter’s Street north-westwards,
northwards, north westwards, south westwards, south eastwards, eastwards
and south eastwards to include the turning head for 115 metres to 1.5 metres
south east of the boundary between 4 and 5 St Peter’s Close.

LOCATION 6 – CAVENDISH ROAD / CECIL ROAD

RESCIND EXISTING PARKING RESTRICTIONS

No Parking – At Any Time

Cavendish Road (South West Side)
From 13 metres north west of the boundary between 2c Cavendish Road and
168c Hatfield Road for 6 metres to 7 metres north westwards of the boundary
between 2c Cavendish Road and 168c Hatfield Road.

Cecil Road (North West Side)
From the boundary of 58 Cavendish Road for 8.5 metres south westwards to
the south east wall of 58 Cavendish Road.

NEW PARKING RESTRICTIONS

Residents Permit Holders and One Hour Voucher parking Only – 1.30 pm to
3.30 pm Monday to Sunday

Cavendish Road (South West Side)
From 13 metres north westwards of the boundary between 2c Cavendish
Road and 168c Hatfield Road for 6 metres to 7 metres north westwards of the
boundary between 2c Cavendish Road and 168c Hatfield Road.

From the boundary between 2c and 2b Cavendish Road for 9 metres to 1
metre south east of the boundary between 2 and 2a Cavendish Road.

Cecil Road (North West Side)
From the north east boundary of 58 Cavendish Road for 8.5 metres south
westwards to the south west wall of 58 Cavendish Road.

LOCATION 7 – CLARENCE ROAD

NEW PARKING RESTRICTIONS

No Parking – At Any Time

Charmouth Road (East Side) and Sandpit Lane (North Side)
From 16 metres south with the boundary between 43 Sandpit Lane and 2
Charmouth Road for 42 metres to 7 metres west of the boundary between 43
and 45 Sandpit Lane.

Charmouth Road (West Side) and Sandpit Lane (North Side)
From the eastern wall of 41 Sandpit Lane for 39 metres to the boundary
between 41 Sandpit Lane and 1 Charmouth Road.

Clarence Road (East Side) and Sandpit Lane (South Side)
From the boundary between 20a Sandpit Lane and 140 Clarence Road for 54
metres to 10 metres south of the northern boundary of 140 Clarence Road.

Clarence Road (West Side) and Sandpit Lane (South Side)
From the eastern wall of 41 Clarence Road for 27.5 metres to 7 metres north
of the boundary between 39 and 41 Clarence Road.
Page 16 of 34
No Parking – 11.00am to 1.00pm, Monday to Saturday

Clarence Road (East Side)
From 5.5 metres south of the boundary between 92 and 94a Clarence Road
for 117 metres to 3.5 metres north of the boundary between 112 and 114
Clarence Road.

Clarence Road (West Side)
From 6 metres south in line with the boundary between 21 and 23 Clarence
Road for 184 metres to 7 metres north of the boundary between 39 and 41
Clarence Road.

Clarence Road (West Side)
From 6 metres south in line with the boundary between 21 and 23 Clarence
Road for 184 metres to 7 metres north of the boundary between 39 and 41
Clarence Road.

£12.5 million wasted on St Albans office block as Government abolishes Learning and Skills quango

From Education Guardian Tuesday

The final days of the Learning and Skills Council may yet be its rockiest. Not only is its disillusioned workforce considering strike action over their employment rights, but now comes the realisation that the taxpayer may have to pay nearly £42m merely so the dying quango can vacate its premises.

Of the organisation’s 50 bases around the country, 19 will house the two new quangos, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA), which are to take over – with local authorities – the LSC’s functions.

The remaining 31 offices are surplus to requirements and all but one of them have leases still to run, in some cases for up to 10 years. Even where these leases have “break clauses”, enabling the LSC to get out of agreements before they end, there are considerable sums to pay to do this.

For the taxpayer, the most painful office closure looks like being the Hertfordshire branch, whose lease runs until 2018. According to documents leaked to Education Guardian, this building in St Albans, housing just 32 people, will cost £12.5m to give up.

The 31 offices are to be handed over to the Treasury, which under normal circumstances could expect to find other government tenants or to sublet them. “This is probably as bad a time to be disposing of commercial property as you could imagine, so landlords won’t take anything less than the maximum because they won’t be able to re-let quickly,” says one LSC insider.

It is galling for the workforce, after they have witnessed the stalling of the capital building programme and the more recent debacle over funding for 16-year-olds, to see such a large sum of public money apparently squandered.

Chris comments: More education money wasted as Government reverses its own policy: how may schools in St Albans would this have built?