ian smith for julie lewis
TRANSCRIPT
Your Ref:
Our Ref.
18.2.16
To Whom it may concern
Dear Sir/Madam
RE Julie Lewis
I have pleasure in providing a reference for Julie.
I have known Julie since June 2015 when I became the Interim Director in Lambeth following their poor OFSTED inspection. Julie was already working here having been here since the following year. I should add that Julie was not responsible for any of the poor finding in the Inspection.
When I arrived in Lambeth I found a large number of Interims in post and I had to question what they were actually doing and how they were impacting upon improving children’s lives and helping Lambeth on its improvement journey. This was not the case with Julie.
I always found Julie extremely hard working and always willing to go the extra mile to improve the service and to help improve children’s lives. She had particular responsibility for the Adoption and Fostering Services and the Placement Services. She had strong ideas about how she could improve the services and had set about bringing about the changes required. For example in Adoption she introduced a robust tracking system and set clear time-scales for case and held people to account, including using HR processes. As a result within a very short period of time Lambeth’s number of children being adopted rose significantly to be equal to the best in London and the timeliness of adoption moved Lambeth from being the worst in the country to being better than national averages for new children coming into the system. OFSTED noted this improvement in their monthly visit to us in January.
London Borough of LambethInternational House, 7th Floor6 Canterbury Crescent, London email:[email protected] 7QE Telephone: 0207 926 4787 www.lambeth.gov.uk
Julie is focused on her work. Makes tough decisions but also brings people with her. She was a real asset to us in Lambeth and I was very sorry to see her leave but understood her reasons for leaving. She gave us a lot more time than she originally committed to us.
I would have no hesitation in employing Julie again or in recommending her to anyone.
Yours sincerely
Ian Smith
Director Children’s Social Care
London Borough of Lambeth 7th Floor International House Telephone: 020 7926 47916 Canterbury Crescent email: [email protected] SW9 7QE website: http//www.lambeth.gov.uk