Bean Counting.

I was very pleased to see that the Daily Post has picked up on Inspector Steve Williams's article in the Police Federation's publication 'Focus' criticising North Wales Police's 'obsession with performance and that it is hampering our relationship with the public'...hear...hear. The problem is that the Police are concentrationg on counting crimes rather than providing a quality service. To give an example, compare someone who is arrested for urinating in the street and someone arrested for a stabbing...they are both ONE VIOLENT CRIME each and that is what North Wales Police count...what a nonsense. An officer who arrests 10 people for urinating in the street gets more credit than the officer who arrests 1 person for a stabbing...is it then any wonder why officers go for the easy jobs and give less attention to the ones that harder to detect...that is where quality suffers and the public get disillusioned by the Police.

The Police is not the only public service which suffers because of performance, the Council is no different and Children's Social Services must be the most heavily inspected and their performance monitored more than ay other council department. To give an example Wrexham's Children's Social Services have 130 performance measurements which is the same number as they have of children being looked after...how ridiculous is that?

The various inspection agencies in the Welsh Assembly Government have been running around 'like headless chickens' since details of the sad death of Baby P in Haringey was published sending letters out like confetti demanding this, that and the other. The problem is that the more demands the Welsh Assembly Government send out to Children's Social Services the more work it creates for front line staff and managers who then cannot deliver services to children in the County Borough.

What Inspectors in the Welsh Assembly Government are doing is 'closing the door after the horse has bolted' what is needed is more rational thinking and less 'knee jerk reactions'