COSTLY mistakes which led to Dumfries and Galloway Council losing a five-figure sum of cash have still not been rectified a year later.
In September 2023, it was revealed that the council had made overpayments of £30,000 to a carer because no routine checks had been made.
Monthly payments continued to be made to a kinship carer in the region for two years – despite the child no longer living with them.
Social workers never spotted the anomaly and it was only after an internal audit was carried out that it was discovered how much Dumfries and Galloway Council was out of pocket.
An overhaul of systems and processes were promised at the council’s audit, risk and scrutiny committee in September last year.
Council officers vowed to review systems and introduce extra checks to prevent similar costly mistakes occurring in future.
They stated at the time: “A check will be done of all payments each month to ensure that they are correct. Processes will be reviewed to see if further control improvements may be made.”
However, the issue will be discussed again by the committee this week and a report, due to be tabled at the meeting, suggests that little progress has been made since.
It states: “An internal audit report on mosaic payments (fostering, adoption and kinship care) was received by this committee in September 2023 which recommended that the social worker responsible for each child should check each month that they are placed with the stated carer.
“A social worker has recently been appointed specifically to manage the kinship care service. He advised that whilst kinship care placements are reviewed annually, in some cases there is no allocated social worker so such reviews will not be happening.
“A sample check of 20 placements by internal audit found that, whilst a programme of home visits to kinship carers had been instigated, in most cases these visits had yet to take place.
“The manager advised that regular reviews will happen once his team are in place.”
