19 year old in charge of Children’s Services for Leicestershire Council

[MmeChoufleur]

Reform have appointed a 19 year old, Councillor Charles Pugsley, to run Children’s Services for Leicestershire County Council, . How would you feel about this if you lived in the borough and had SEND children?

Does this make a mockery of democracy, handing over such an important role to a person with no experience in the workplace, certainly not at any high level?

Will this make Reform voters sit up and think about the consequences of voting for this party?

Jesus

I hadn’t spotted this but it affects me. Fabulous.

Fuuuuuck! 😯

It makes me feel sick.

Fucking hell. That's insane.

Well this is going to be interesting, let's see how long he'll last. Are there any compromising pictures of him or reports of anti social behaviour since he's only 19 so they'll be easily found on the Internet?!!

What? I’ve worked in education for over 20 years and have lots of experience with SEND provision and when a similar job came up near me I questioned if I was experienced enough and didn’t apply!
FFS.

I'm guessing "practically a child himself so loads of experience" of that.

I don't think the people who need to use children's services would generally vote Reform.

That’s insane. How can any 19 year old possibly have the experience or training needed to successfully run any council department?

Wow. Still, I'm sure that his older experienced female colleagues will whip him into shape. They'll make mincemeat out of him. I'll give him a week in the role!

So he said this when appointed:
“Some say I’m young. I say that’s exactly what this role needs. I understand the challenges young people face today because I’ve been there. Now, I’m making sure young voices are heard.”

To be honest, the person holding that job makes very little difference. Council budgets have effectively zero leeway now - they are stretched beyond the point of reality by legally-mandated SEN/children's services, temporary accommodation, and adult social care spending. There’s nothing left for the person ‘in charge’ to decide.

He’s not “running” children‘s services day-to-day. He’s the councillor with responsibility for them. It’s a part time oversight-type role. The department won’t fall apart.

It’s still stupid though.

You forgot some key information here op-he’s Reform too.
Given that 6 Reform councillors have already resigned I doubt he will last long.

Fingers crossed, or you never know, maybe he'll bring something new and learn.

Yeah, I know. Ever the optimist.

I don't remember all this hysteria when Mhairi Black appeared on the scene in Scotland. People thought that was fantastic

You need to get your title and OP edited, this is misinformation.

This.

He's not in charge of anything.

Get in touch with your concerns if you're in that area.

Well I suppose he has very recent experience of being a child. 🫤

He has been appointed into a role. He is an elected official. Entirely different. The head of the service who is employed by the Council will hopefully be competent and experienced and will be use to dealing with incompetence. I would have thought most children’s services are statutory so he won’t really have any power. Except over budgets.

While I don’t think this is a good choice at all, the interpretations of his role in this thread is a bit off. He isn’t going to ‘run’ children’s services. That is the director of children’s services and a non-politicised role, typically held by experienced professionals. The councillors are elective representatives, not managers… they work closely with the DCS and yes, as other posters have said, have some limited influence over policy/budget but it’s always done in collaboration with those actually running children’s services.

Although, you know, erm, budgets are quite important

Councillors have quite a lot of responsibility though. They have to sign off big project spends for a start. He could block plans that the service wanted to go ahead with. It's not a puppet role by any means.

He doesn’t run the department, that is the department head who is a permanent full time paid role. He’s a Cllr so will be what’s called a portfolio holder, or in this case cabinet member, so yes will work with the department in some why but he’s not actually decision maker