There are a number of fairly important topics covered by the Social Work and Education PDS Committee on Tuesday 14th but probably the most pressing was the Social Work Inspectorate Report and a presentation by Gill Otley from the Social Work Inspectorate in regards to how social work was functioning within Glasgow.

Although there were some positives within the report, there were some major areas of concern that require to be addressed by the authority, particularly in regards to offenders work within the city.

It was put to the Committee that the previous Inspectorate’s report had highlighted exactly the same issues of poor workmanship, lack of trust in management and lack of trust in the Councillors by the staff.  As well as this, there were indications that there were offenders who were leaving prison who were not seen within the statutory time and late reports etc. for the courts were of major issue.  As far as offenders work, the authority was failing quite abysmally in regards to the standards that would be required for any authority in Scotland.  The 2004 report had expressed the same concerns and these appear not to be addressed, the SNP group put to the Council that they should form sub-committee of the Committee to examine the issues and to report back, this was refused and went to a vote, which Labour won 12-5, the SNP Group were therefore thwarted in having a sensible look at this vital area of work.  The conclusion of the Committee’s work was after this vote that Social Work would go and feed back to Committee in September as to what they intended to do about the concerns expressed in the Social Work enquiry report.

The above was obviously not satisfactory and there are concerns that what will come back from Social Work are the same plans that were and same program that was presented to Committee after the last Inspectorate Report.  There are a number of other areas, which were addressed and it is quite clear that this Committee is fairly dynamic now as far as the SNP are concerned and should be the case given that it is one of the most important Committees that the Council has.

It is also clear that having two major areas such as Education and Social Work under the scrutiny of one committee is too unwieldy and does not permit sufficient time for the discussion of these two vital areas of work.  We believe that this has now been accepted by the Labour members present, but whether they act on it is something else.