SOCIAL services bosses have been ordered to take urgent action to improve their department after a damning report by inspectors.

The Audit Commission launched a scathing attack on Lancashire Social Services and concluded that the people of Lancashire "are not consistently well served" by the department.

The shock report says social workers often don't intervene in cases involving both children and adults until the situation reaches crisis point.

And it tells how the audit team's check discovered that 13 children on the child protection register in March last year did not even have an allocated social worker according to records.

And this is despite the fact that the county has the second highest social services budget among similar authorities.

County Hall bosses and councillors were meeting today but were due to discuss the report and its findings in private.

Inspectors found that although Lancashire had begun to realise the urgency of a radical review of social services, much remains to be done.

And they raised serious doubts about the authority's ability to rise to "secure change of the required magnitude" because of its persistent failure to respond to past inspection reports.

The report criticised the high numbers of children and older people who are put into institutional care and said that a higher proportion of these children should be in foster care.

And the inspectors found that although social services had reduced the number of youngsters on the child protection register, the high number of children who are re-registered pointed to the need for greater family support.

Other care agencies had also expressed concerns to the review team about the handling of child protection cases.

One senior medical representative felt that his misgivings about children who were not considered at risk were not given adequate consideration.

And the inspection found that the number of children in Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale on the child protection register accounted for a third of the county's total.

Management of the department was described as "not conducive to the creation of a flexible, well motivated workforce" and the "pervading culture" of the authority is described as one of "defensiveness" with morale "depressed by distrust." Andrew Webster, director of joint reviews, said: "Lancashire faces a significant challenge to improve services for local people. Despite evidence that social services are well regarded by users, the review team have identified fundamental weaknesses in the way they are planned, managed and delivered.

"To ensure that they provide consistent high-quality care for local people and meet the demands of best value, Lancashire must urgently learn the lessons of this report and undertake a radical review of all social services."

Coun Miss Doreen Pollitt, chairman of the county's social services committee, said: "The review was undertaken at a time when six years of uncertainty for staff had only recently ended. Local government reorganisation had raised many questions and concerns about the future of county council services and of the many staff it employs.

"However, now we are out of this period we must move on.

"We see the overall judgement of the review as being overly harsh and in some areas it is not well evidenced by the reported findings.

"The approach taken in the review report is generally a negative one.

"It is very unfortunate that the many areas of significant strengths and the major changes over a number of years have not been given greater prominence."

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