Surrey County Council: "Scrutiny is crucial for building public confidence"
On Monday (December 15) Surrey County Council had an extraordinary meeting to review progress made in children's services since the murder of 10-year-old Sara Sharif
The Surrey County Council cabinet member for children's services has been telling us about his and the councils determination to show they have learned their lessons following the murder of Sara Sharif
Last month a Child Safeguarding Practice Review showed institutional failures leading up to the murder of the 10-year-old in Woking in 2023
These failures included failing to question unexplained bruising, or why Sara was wearing a Hijab and not recognising the fact that Sara was at risk of abuse
On December 9, a motion was passed unanimously at a council meeting for an independent investigation to take place to review progress made in their system and culture within children's services.
Another part of the motion was to have an extraordinary council meeting of the Children, Families, Lifelong and Select Committee to scrutinise the review and develop recommendations.
At the meeting was Jonathan Hulley, who is the Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning at Surrey County Council.
He told us the council are determined to show development since Sara's death
"There's not a day that goes by where all members of the County Council and all officers linked to the Children's Directorate and our safeguarding team haven't thought about what more we could have done
How we could have done things differently, what we might have been able to do to save Sara
But we have to move forward now. We have to learn the lessons of what the review identified in its 15 recommendations and move a pace to implement those recommendations."
Jonathan Hulley spoke to us about the importance of scrutiny going forward
"I'm a great supporter of the concept of scrutiny. Scrutiny matters in my view. Scrutiny is very important to ensure that the public have confidence in the decision making of local authorities, any public bodies for that matter
I thought that the scrutiny conducted by the Select Committee yesterday was very well done and at the end of the session they brought forward a number of recommendations which will be fed into the independent reviewer."
Finally Jonathan added that the improvement into safeguarding services is a continuous process for the council
"A lot of work has been done to further improve the safeguarding service at the county since the tragic murder of Sara in 2023.
A number of steps have already been taken to improve systems, culture and processes but there's more to be done. There's always more to be done. This is an authority that believes in continuous improvement."
An interim report from the independent review will is expected to be released in February of next year and then the final report is set to be published in March.