HEREFORDSHIRE Social Services has received a 'one star' rating by government inspectors who found the council serves some people well and shows promise to improve.

The report has been compiled by the Social Services Inspectorate who for the first time has graded all of England's 150 council's on a scale of zero to three stars.

Herefordshire's rating means it will receive a share of a £50 million Performance Fund, but will not enjoy the spending freedom of three star councils.

Sue Fiennes, Herefordshire Council's director of housing and social services says that the hard work of staff is going in the right direction: "If improvements on completing child protection reviews on time during 2001-2002 had been available, the picture would have been even better."

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She said that Herefordshire compares well to other authorities and is amongst 82 councils scoring one star.

The council claims to be amongst the best in the country in six of 11 areas that were studied. These are supporting children in placements, improving children's education qualifications, the effective use of the child protection register, working with children on the register, looking after the right people in care homes and the inspection of children's and adult's homes.

"These results show a steady improvement over all the measures which is extremely promising. However, there is much more to do to help older people stay at home," added Sue.

As part of its reform of social services, the government's goal is for all councils to score three stars in the future.