Families were being referred to social services “without consent and knowledge” when safeguarding of children in Surrey was a concern, it has emerged. 

And they were “quite often” sent through for assessments when they did not meet the statutory levels required for intervention, a meeting heard. 

It is not known how many families were referred unnecessarily. 

These are the latest details to emerge about the protection of children when a damning Ofsted report in 2018 highlighted children’s services in Surrey County Council as inadequate.

The situation is said to have now “significantly” improved with “no evidence of unsafe work” in the department. 

But councillors were told more about the extent of problems in the run up to the Ofsted report last year.  

Fears around the safety of vulnerable children were raised in the report in 2018, with inspectors finding a “high number of inappropriate low-level” of referrals to the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). 

They said protection for vulnerable children was “inadequate”. 

The MASH model has now been disbanded and replaced with different partner-agency work between social workers, police officers and other experts called C-SPA (Children’s Single Point of Contact). 

Councillors at SCC children, families, lifelong learning and culture select committee heard on Thursday (September 12) that progress was now being made as they grilled leading council staff. 

Lower levels of contacts with parents has been reported, but Councillor Robert Evans questioned whether this meant fewer people were being referred. 

He said: “What evidence is there that demand is reducing and needs are being met rather than the families needing support are slipping below the surface?”

The Children’s Single Point of Contact (C-SPA) went live in May. This involved moving the service out of Guildford Police Station and into Guildford Borough Council Offices. 

The C-SPA replaces the previous MASH and is made up of three parts: Request for Support Team located with the corporate contact centre in County Hall, the Early Help Hub and the Multi–Agency Partnership (MAP). 

The focus of this service is to direct children and families to the right help as quickly as possible. The C-SPA has a range of professionals from health, education, social care and police. 

Outlining the scale of the problem identified by Ofsted last year, Jacquie Burke, SCC’s director of safeguarding and family resilience, said: “We just had an open door. Families were being referred without formal consent or knowledge at times.

“Quite often families were sent through for assessment and they didn’t meet statutory levels.”

Responding to Cllr Evans’s concerns, she said a hotline for teachers and police officers to discuss issues means many people are able to get advice before referring families, which was reducing the caseload of social workers allowing them to “think very carefully about what help families need”. 

She said there had been “significant improvements” with how they were working. 

Cllr Mary Lewis, cabinet member for children, assured members that the restructuring of the department had not impacted the safeguarding of children in Surrey. 

She said: “Although we’ve had a lot of regulatory visits from Ofsted and the commissioner they have not found evidence of unsafe work. Change is a time we all recognise as being dangerous, potentially, but none of the regulators have said any of the visits they found anything that was unsafe.”

The transformation of Surrey’s children services including the closing of children centres, involved restructuring of around 2,700 staff members with around 300 leaving through redundancies. 

Target savings for the restructure of staff was £6.3million but this will not be realised until next financial year due to the number of staff working their notice or receiving payment in lieu of notice. 

Children’s centres are now called Family Centres and services have been outsourced to a number of providers, including schools, borough and district councils and Barnardo’s. 

SCC has identified the need to make up to £250 million savings by 2021.