Use of interim DCSs

Charlotte Ramsden, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), said:

“Directors of children’s services carry huge responsibilities on behalf of their local communities. Our statutory role means that we are responsible for children in care, safeguarding and child protection, supporting children and young people with special educational needs and overseeing school admissions as well as managing multi-million-pound budgets and thousands of members of staff. One person cannot achieve this alone, it is a huge team effort, requiring the backing and support of the authority’s wider senior management team, as well as political leaders. It also requires a complex multi-agency system, including partners such as the police and health colleagues, to work well together because safeguarding children is everyone’s business.

“These roles can be hard to fill and the salaries of directors need to be considered within the context of comparable senior officers in other parts of local government, the health service and education. Interim leaders can be employed to cover gaps whilst recruitment takes place for a permanent director or to take on a planned role as part of improvement work, which is often for an agreed period, meaning several changes in a short timescale. Improvement work is hard, and it takes a long time, working alongside Ofsted, government departments and local political leaders. This is a much wider and more complex issue than the role and effectiveness of the director alone.”

---

---