Meeting to give voice to parents

A public meeting this week will give Herefordshire parents a chance to make known their bad experiences with the council’s children’s services.

But whether senior council figures will be there to hear them remains unclear.

Organised by support group A Common Bond, the meeting will be held on Thursday (October 20) between 9.30am and 11am at Hereford Rowing Club, 37 Greyfriars Avenue, Hereford HR4 0BE.

The group said that as councillors and senior management could not attend the original meeting planned for last week, “we have set a date to the following week, to give all the opportunity to attend and show they are serious about hearing your voices”.

The group’s coordinator Angeline (we are not using her surname for legal reasons) said that Eleanor Brazil, the children’s commissioner recently appointed by the Government to determine whether the department should be put under external control, had accepted an invitation to attend.

But neither director of children’s services Darryl Freeman, council chief executive Paul Walker, nor cabinet member for children’s services Coun Diana Toynbee had responded to invitations, she said.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked the three whether they would attend, but had not received a reply at time of publication.