Half of the two stars Social Services in the country have been upgraded to three stars, but Hammersmith and Fulham didn't make it. The council's Social Services maintained its two star rate with some improvements in the performance table published last week by the Department of Health. Another 63 councils have been upgraded and joined Hammersmith and Fulham two stars group. With the overall improvement in performance, 60% of social services departments in the country are now two or three stars, compared with 42% last year.

The Council's Adult's services presented the same performance results as last year: it is serving most of people well and it has promising capacity for improvement. Prospects for improvement are rated as uncertain, promising and excellent. Children services improved from serving "some" people well to serving "most" people well this year and it maintained a promising capacity for improvement.

There have been a number of changes to the set of indicators this year. While new sets have been added (for example "users who said they were very or extremely satisfied"), inspections of children's homes and residential care homes for adults and older people have been deleted. "Users who said they got help quickly" or "users who said that matters relating to race, culture or religion were noted" are another deleted indicators.

"This is another good result for us," says Cllr Reg McLaughlin, deputy for social inclusion. "Getting to the top of the two star rating category is a great achievement for the department and I'd like to thank all the staff that have made this possible. I am particularly pleased with the improvement in services for children and our future prospects for the top three star rating are looking very healthy."

Improvement in performance is key to rebuild confidence in the social services affected by the death of Victoria Climbié. The creation of Children's Trusts, following the recommendations of the Laming Report that investigated Victoria's death, is another step into reforming the services for children taken by Hammersmith and Fulham council together with 35 local authorities across the country.

The Laming Report was very critical about the lack of co-ordination between child protection and child welfare services. In Hammersmith and Fulham, lack of co-ordination and poor communication between a plethora of structures and services are problems already identified. A recent survey found major disparities between NHS and council data on children and families. Headstar survey showed that about 48% of the department's records were not the same as the ones in the NHS database. There are discrepancies about alive and dead people (3%) and gender (1%).

Department of Health Web site