Gwynedd Council - Falsus In Uno, Falsus In Omnibus...

Cyngor Gwynedd council have now appointed Huw Dylan Owen as Director of Social Services. The former Director had no experience of social service matters so someone with the correct background for the position hopefully meant that the past maladministration and failings within the services would not be repeated…

Bearing in mind, that Gwynedd council have admitted that the culture within the council needs to change, it is disappointing that the present director appears to be behaving in the same manner as his predecessor. In his annual report, presented to the council earlier this year, he states – .…no young person from Gwynedd has been remanded since 2020.

This is not true and while the council may argue this was correct at the time of writing – it was most certainly not at the time of publication. Mr Owen’s generic report also states – Another example is that we refused to welcome Youth Justice inspectors as they were unable to guarantee bilingual inspectors, and they agreed to delay their inspection until this was possible.

How long ago was the last inspection? It is unacceptable that the youth justice inspectors are not bilingual, but this does mean that the service avoids inspection by an outside agency and should be of concern to all…

Moving on, Mr Owen mentions feedback and recommendations from government regulators, perhaps not realising Gwynedd council has a history of agreeing to recommendations and then ignoring them…

The director goes on –Unfortunately, cases have arisen where things go wrong and where we have not provided a service of the expected high standard. There is a statutory complaints procedure in place to ensure that we receive feedback, and respond to any concerns so that we do not repeat mistakes. Reference has already been made to the main trends of the complaints for this year, and an official summary will appear before the Care Scrutiny Committee in September 2023. We intend to place our complaints report and comments on the Council’s website in the future so that they are available to the public.

Gwynedd council’s democratic services were recently asked for a copy of the report that the director informed at a previous meeting was available for members on request. It took a second email asking for an update to which an officer replied with –

The annual Social Services complaints handling reports have been presented to Cabinet and Scrutiny in the past but the reports for 2022/23 are yet to be scheduled to be presented to a committee meeting.

This word salad from the democracy service ignores the fact that the statutory documents have not been presented for proper scrutiny for nearly five years and confirms yet another statement from the director’s report that is incorrect.

The children and adults complaints handling reports are important documents. Alongside the Director’s Annual report they are the first documents to be read by government agencies as a snapshot of how the departments are performing. They may also be read by investigators when more serious concerns are raised.

A reminder that these reports have been called out for their disingenuity and data manipulation since 2016 and no complaints handling report has been presented to the care scrutiny committee since 2019…

For what its worth, the report from the director can be found here –https://www.gwynedd.llyw.cymru/en/Council/Documents—Council/Performance-and-spending/Adroddiad-y-Cyfarwyddwr-Gwasanaethau-Cymdeithasol-22-23-SAES-2.pdf

Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council…