Concerns raised over foster carer accused of abuse

Herefordshire's director of children's services said the council's foster panel was informed of concerns raised by police

Officials in Herefordshire must admit they were wrong to house children with a foster carer previously accused of multiple counts of child abuse, a senior figure in the county has said.

It is understood the individual was cleared more than a decade ago of over a dozen historic cases of child indecent assault and rape and they now jointly look after children without supervision.

Former Herefordshire Council leader and head of the county's Liberal Democrat group, Terry James, said he had tried to raise what he called "this serious oversight".

Herefordshire's director of children's services Tina Russell said the council's foster panel was informed of concerns raised by police.

Concerns about the placement were first raised with the council in 2022 and now a group of parents in Herefordshire and professionals is pressing it to look again at the case.

"It is simply not safe from a safeguarding perspective to use a not guilty verdict as a proxy for 'safe'," the Families' Alliance for Change (FAC) Herefordshire said.

When alerted, police immediately raised the case with Herefordshire's Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) – created to ensure different agencies share key information on vulnerable individuals.

Case 'reviewed extensively'

Ms Russell said the council's panel, which oversees placements in the county, was "appropriately informed" of concerns raised by police.

"Fostering panels do not need to be informed individually or of every referral received," she stated in an email seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The government-appointed commissioner for children's services in Herefordshire, Deborah McMillan, has now said in a reply to FAC's claims that she had been "assured the routes to raise the issue have been used to a full extent".

She also stated Ms Russell had "reviewed the case extensively".

"My advice continues to be for the families to use the Herefordshire complaints process and to report any child safeguarding concerns to the MASH," Ms McMillan wrote.

Former vice-chair of the committee that scrutinises the county's children's services, Jennie Hewitt, said she was "horrified that the council has left the children in this placement".

She added the authority "has used every bureaucratic trick in the book to avoid proper accountability and scrutiny in this case".

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.