New council kids’ services chief prepares for “difficult” job

Ian Thomas, who becomes the permanent replacement for Joyce Thacker as Rotherham Borough Council’s director of children’s services next month, accused previous council chiefs of weak leadership.

He told The Guardian newspaper that the the structure of the council children’s services department was “all over the place, chaos, not fit for purpose”.

Mr Thomas (45), has been praised for helping results in the Derbyshire Council area improve in the past three years.

Now he is preparing to take on the tough task of restoring Rotherham’s reputation by tackling problems in the department accused, alongside the police, of overlooking sexual abuse of 1,400 victims, mainly by men of Pakistani origin, over a 16-year period.

He added: “I don’t think in terms of leadership Rotherham has been strong enough in challenging poor practice,” he says.

“The most demotivating thing for staff is when people aren’t pulling their weight and there’s no sanctions, when management don’t take appropriate action.

“Some of the good stuff that’s happened in Rotherham has been in spite of ineffective leadership.”

Among those leader was Mrs Thacker, of whom Mr Thomas said: “I have to be careful because I know the last person, and she’s a lovely woman.”

But he added: “The way I would couch it would be to say I would do things differently, in terms of aspiring to get the best for our kids and our families.

“I work on the principle that if it’s not good enough for my family, it’s not good enough for the people that we are serving.”

The council was rated as inadequate by Ofsted last month and is currently being inspected by Louise Casey, head of the government’s troubled families unit, while investigations continue into missing files concerning child sex abuse discussions between 1999 to 2003.

“When you look at that, it’s a toxic mix, isn’t it?”, says Thomas. “Turning around a service that’s facing all those challenges is a daunting prospect.”

Mr Thomas said he did not yet know why the perpertrators were mainly Pakistani men and the victims mainly whilte girls but was not afraid to challenge the Asian community.

He said being black should not necessarily make it easier to criticise ethnic minority groups, adding: “It should be as easy for a white person to do as a black person. It comes down to your values, and if you’ve got a moral compass you go back to it, your moral sense of purpose tells you it’s right to act, to disrupt and to protect.

“Nothing should deter us or deviate from that.”

Mr Thomas aims for Rotherham children’s services to be “outstanding” by 2018, although he has only been given a 12- month contract so far, and said he was confident that child sex abusers described in Jay’s report would be put on trial.