A “WEALTH of experience” is worth £500 a day - over 36 days a year - to the new head of  Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board (HSCB) who will be shared with two other counties.

Sally Halls, currently chair of the Shropshire Safeguarding Children’s Board and the Somerset Safeguarding Children Board has accepted the role of independent chair of the HSCB.

She takes over from Dave McCallum who has decided to step down from the role after three years.    

Today (Thurs) Herefordshire Council confirmed that Sally Halls would be shared with Shropshire and Somerset in heading up the respective safeguarding boards and bringing a “wealth of experience” to the role.

 The role of independent chair equates to 36 days a year at £500 a day – or £18,000 – that the council has budgeted for.

Recruitment papers reveal the cost of advertising the post in The Guardian for one week was £900 found through the safeguarding board budget.

Decisions on recruitment and appointment were made by the council at chief executive level.

It is a statutory requirement for the council and partner organisations to operate a safeguarding children board with an independent chair.

Meeting throughout the year, the board brings together representatives from various agencies and organisations to address child protection issues.

The new chair takes over just weeks after the government lifted the intervention notice served on Herefordshire Council’s child protection services, recognising improvements made to child protection practice in the county since the “inadequate”  finding by Ofsted in 2012.

Last year, Ofsted returned to record substantial progress being made.

The government took Ofsted’s report into account and Department for Education (DfE) officials carried out their own review in December ahead of lifting the intervention notice.

Related reports cite a “new found confidence” within the service given “added impetus” to the progress being made.

The council wants to see the service graded “good” by 2016/17 but, from the frontline up, it is accepted that there is still some way to go.

Improvements are said to be not yet fully embedded and the staffing situation remains relatively fragile, though its reliance on agency appointments is easing.

As reported by the Hereford Times, permanent staff appointments are a priority with the council ready to pay “London rates” to recruit child safeguarding specialists.

The offer, signed off at cabinet level, is aimed at ending the long-running reliance child safeguarding has on interim appointments.

Against heavy competition regionally and nationally for such specialists,  the council proposal pitches a base salary of up to £40,000 for a social worker and up to £50,000 for a team manager – comparable to salaries paid in London and the south-east.

This would be coupled with a £5,000 “golden hello” payment and up to £5,000 cover for re-location costs to make what is pitched as the most competitive safeguarding recruitment offer in the West Midlands.

Another £27,500 will be spent on related recruitment advertising, emphasising the progress made by the service since the “inadequate” Ofsted verdict of 2012 and the work-life balance the county can provide.

The approach  will be implemented through the council’s existing recruitment services contract with Hoople seen as able to offer a higher, more competitive basic salary, offset by a defined contribution pension scheme with an employer’s contribution rate of six per cent rather than the 24.6 per cent of the local government equivalent.

On the council’s figures,  the campaign makes a cash saving of £4,000 over 2015-16 and £50,000 in subsequent years.

The service is also engaged in  a “grow your own” scheme to attract and develop newly qualified social workers.

Eight recruited in 2013 are now ready to fill permanent roles that would have gone to an interim with another eight set to make the same difference next year.

Figures now available show 421 contacts were made with child safeguarding over December last year, a decrease of over 43 per cent from the peak of 747 in July and down 24 per cent on November.

Over the month, 10 children were put on to child protection plans, with another 29  on a protection plan for a second or subsequent time with primary factors being domestic abuse, drug misuse, and mental health issues within families.

There continues to be a month-on-month decrease in the number of children put onto protection plans.

But this drop in the number of children on plans is not reflected in figures  for timely child protection visits.

Over recent years, the number of children on specific protection plans in the county at any one time has hovered around 200.

Individual safeguarding caseloads are now said to be manageable and averaging at 16, but there is variance between – and within – teams.

As a result of improvement initiatives, the service has had a number of legacy cases to assess.

Neglect, specifically chronic neglect, makes up much of ongoing caseload work.