THE challenges facing children’s social care in St Helens have been well documented in the Star over the past 15 months.

And while not necessarily surprising, it is still deeply worrying that these essential services supporting the town’s most vulnerable children are not deemed to be up to scratch by government watchdogs, following a full inspection.

The local authority has been following a comprehensive improvement action plan since last year and pumping considerable investment into driving change.

And achieving real cultural change does take time.

However, to read in the report that there are still “widespread and serious failures” in the quality of services for children in care, due to delay in securing children a long-term home is startling.

The leader of St Helens Council, David Baines, who has been in post for six months, is clear a collective effort is needed to drive improvement.

He is no under illusions of the size of the task.

But the difficulties also underline the importance of finding the right candidate to be the council’s new, permanent chief executive. It will be a big job.