Issue - meetings

Further to Minute 10 (17 May 2023), the Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care and Disabilities presented a report on the outcome of the Ofsted inspection of the Council’s Children’s Care and Support service.

The Cabinet Member advised that a full inspection of the Children’s Care and Support service was carried out by Ofsted in July last year and its report was published on 4 September 2023.  The service was assessed as ‘Requires Improvement to be Good’, with a judgement of ‘Good’ in respect of the experiences and progress of care leavers, and Ofsted made eight specific recommendations covering the following areas:

·  Timeliness of strategy meetings;

·  The capacity, quality, consistence and impact of supervision and management oversight;

·  Assessment and decision-making for children experiencing neglect;

·  Timeliness of pre-proceedings pathways;

·  Consistency of response to 16- and 17-year-olds who present as homeless;

·  Oversight of children’s placements in unregistered children’s homes

·  Application of threshold in early help; and

·  Life-story work and permanence planning

In response to Ofsted’s findings, the Council developed an Improvement Plan which was reflected in its Children’s Care and Support Self-Evaluation for 2023/24.  The self-evaluation was shared with Ofsted, in line with its Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Service (ILACS) framework, and an engagement meeting was held on 17 April 2024 where progress was discussed in detail.

The Cabinet Member was pleased to report that the Council had received a positive response from Ofsted on the progress made since its previous full inspection in 2019 and with the Improvement Plan.  That progress had been achieved during a particularly challenging period and the Cabinet Member referenced the Covid-19 pandemic, high population growth, increased levels of deprivation and increasing complexity of need as factors which required new approaches and ways of working.  The point was also made that the inadequate funding of social care services by the Government was not taken into account by Ofsted. 

On the issue of funding, Members called on the Government to overhaul the social care funding system so that all local authorities, and especially those with high levels of deprivation such as Barking and Dagenham, received adequate funding to meet demand.  It was acknowledged that without proper funding, the pace at which the Council would be able to implement its Improvement Plan and its ambition to invest in new prevention services would be hampered. 

The Assembly resolved to:

(i)  Note the Children’s Care and Support Ofsted Improvement Plan at Appendix A to the report; and

(ii)  Note the progress made and areas requiring further improvement throughout the duration of the Improvement Plan.