Senior staff at Herefordshire Council have vowed to address the failures at its children’s services department highlighted in the BBC Panorama programme shown earlier this week.

“We recognise there were failures over many years,” chief executive Paul Walker said. “Improving children’s services is my and this council’s number one priority.”

He said the caseload on individual social workers, an issue brought up in critical Ofsted inspections, “has gone from 35-40 per social worker when I joined a year ago, to around 20 now. That gives them time to develop relationships with families in what is delicate and complex work.”

The lack of supervision of staff is also being addressed, along with monthly reviews of all cases, he said.

“We know from audits of over 1,100 open cases that nearly half of those were judged inadequate or requiring improvement – so we understand the baseline, and it’s much lower than any of us would have thought.”

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The council has a care concern line, which was contacted by 14 residents immediately after the programme.

“We will follow these up,” Mr Walker said, and urged other residents who feel their cases were mishandled by the department to also get in touch.

The department has already been given £11.5 million extra to spend this year on recruiting staff and improving procedures.

“We have increased management oversight, training and support,” director of children’s services Darryl Freeman said. “No one can guarantee no mistakes will be made in future, but we are improving.”

A social worker mentioned in the programme who was found to have falsified a report on a family “has been dismissed”, he said. “We have a policy that if someone leaves, they are not re-employed within two years. We have good practitioners here, but we will call out poor practice.”

As for staff numbers, “we are committed to growing and retaining our own and supporting newly qualified staff”, he said. “Recruitment is a national challenge though.”

Council leader David Hitchiner, who is expected to be voted back into the role for another year by fellow councillors this Friday, added: “We are trying to make Herefordshire a place people want to come and live and work in.

“The publicity this has received is a concern. But we want to lay out our stall – they are not coming to a council where things are hidden. It’s a real opportunity for people who want to grow and develop.”

The Herefordshire coalition, made up of Coun Hitchiner’s Independents for Herefordshire and the Greens, said it was “absolutely devastating to see the systemic failure of children’s services over a number of years”, but added: “A new leadership team is well on its way to improving how children, their families, and the people who support them, are looked after.”

Hereford and South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman said: “It is right that the council’s new chief executive has recognised the severity of the issue and the trauma experienced by the affected families, and has apologised. But it is also important that the council continues to upgrade and support this vital community service.”

Herefordshire Labour Party said: “For too long poor internal leadership, coupled with wasted millions on expensive outside consultants, who rarely fulfil their promises, has left overwhelmed frontline social workers in a perfect storm not of their making.”

But Liberal Democrat councillor Terry James said: “I’ve been telling senior management for years about these kinds of cases highlighted in the programme, but they chose to cover it up, not to take responsibility for individual cases, and that’s still going on.”

He believes that social workers involved in such cases “were kept on at the same pay, and some are still there”.

A letter from Mr Walker apologising to the county’s residents can be found on page 19 of this week’s Hereford Times.

Meanwhile, the Panorama programme can still be watched on the BBC iPlayer.