Call for independent reviewing officers to be protected in disputes with councils

Independent reviewing officers (IROs) must be properly protected when they are in dispute with their local authority, the National Association of Independent Reviewing Officers (NAIRO) has demanded.

In a letter to Children’s Minister Tim Loughton earlier this month, NAIRO reported that some officers claimed to have experienced management constraints to genuinely independent practice, with legitimate challenges being suppressed.

The role of IROs is to scrutinise care plans for looked after children and make sure their wishes and feelings are heard. Where they consider it necessary, they must challenge the local authority and pursue that challenge to the courts.

NAIRO said the fact that IROs are also employed by local authorities could lead to tension. It said councils might not welcome challenges, even where they are legitimate, and take steps to discourage or suppress them.

In its letter to the minister, the Association accepted that in many areas of the country the reviewing system was working well and that IROs were being provided with management arrangements “that facilitate genuinely independent practice and allow proactive and assertive challenge”.

But it said a significant number of examples had been identified where this was not the case.

In addition to concerns about management constraints to independent practice, NAIRO said some officers felt intimidated and fearful to challenge. The Association also claimed that in some cases, IROs had lost their jobs.

The letter to Tim Loughton set out a number of cases the Association had identified in relation to individual local authorities. They included:

• IROs being prevented from exercising an independent role due to a Head of Service….”who has on two occasions, threatened IROs with disciplinary action because they have raised (in their opinion) legitimate concerns regarding children’s cases”;
• IROs being told that they can only make a challenge with the permission of a senior manager;
• IROs being told that they must not refer a case to Cafcass without the permission of a senior manager;
• An IRO manager having a disagreement with their Director of Children’s Services (DCS) in relation to an IRO report due to be presented to Ofsted. “This was because the DCS wanted to edit/suppress the report. The IRO manager refused to allow this to happen and subsequently had to take redundancy following an internal restructuring of the Department which deleted this IRO manager’s post”;
• A freelance IRO had his contract terminated and his cases reallocated to other IROs “because in his view, he made legitimate but unwanted and inconvenient challenges”.

NAIRO called for IROs involved in disputes of this kind to have “at the very least” access to independent arbitration. The Association is looking to include such a provision in a management protocol agreed with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

The letter called on the Children’s Minister to support the introduction of independent arbitration and a binding management protocol.

The Association also urged Loughton to “indicate in the longer term, his intention to issue further regulations/statutory guidance which will offer the necessary protection to IROs” and to back closer scrutiny by Ofsted of management arrangements for IROs.

NAIRO added that if these measures proved insufficient, the minister should consider how to use his powers under s. 11 of the Children & Young Persons Act 2008 to establish independent management arrangements for the IRO service.

Maggie Duggins, NAIRO lead on management issues, said: “The genuine independence of the IRO is absolutely crucial for a young person in care. It is inevitable that their role will sometimes put them in conflict with local authorities. We hope the Government will demonstrate its commitment to looked after children by ensuring IROs are protected when they are in dispute with their local authority.”