Agenda item

The Operational Director Childrens Care and Support and the Commissioning Director for Care and Support presented a report on the OFSTED inspection of Children’s Services and arrangements for publishing the Council’s OFSTED Improvement Plan.

In July 2023, the Council’s was subject to a Standard Inspection under the OFSTED Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Service (ILACS) framework. The inspection itself occurred over a course of three weeks with a lot of preparations made before the inspection. The inspection included heavy scrutiny from the team of inspectors as well as meeting and observing the work of frontline officers.

The overall judgement of the OFSTED inspection was that the services for children required improvement which was the same during the last inspection in 2019. The experiences and progress of care leavers however was rated as “Good” which was the first time it had been achieved in the Council.

The areas that were rated as “Requires improvement to be good” were:

·  The impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families.

·  The experiences and progress of children who need help and protection.

·  The experiences and progress of children in care.

·  Overall effectiveness.

OFSTED identified eight key recommendations where they felt improvement was most strongly required. These were:

·  Timeliness of strategy meetings.

·  The capacity, quality, consistency 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.

·  Life-story work and permanency planning.

The context within which the findings of the inspection that must be considered such as the rapid growth of the boroughs population which had increased by 18% since the 2011 census. The borough also had high levels of deprivation and child poverty, with the COVID pandemic and the current cost-of-living crisis also added to an increase in pressure for children’s services.

In response to a question on whether the children’s mental health played a role in the OFSTED inspection, the Operational Director for Children’s Care and Support advised the Committee that OSTED investigated the mental health of care leavers and children in care. There was a therapy team that supported the emotional wellbeing and mental health of young people and bridge the gap between children and adults’ services. There was also an emotional wellbeing care worker who focused on care leavers.

The recruitment and retention of social workers was a constant challenge to the Council. The use of agency staff within children’s services was lower compared to other boroughs. Social workers would want low caseloads, good supervision, good work-life balance and health and wellbeing support. Caseloads for social workers had been reduced however, compared to other boroughs that were rated good in OFSTED inspections, the caseloads at LBBD were still high. There were specialist intervention services along with other services that work alongside social workers to ensure the social workers were not alone in dealing with caseloads.

The Committee noted that there were areas that had improved since the last OFSTED inspection. However, there are areas that still required improvement with the Council being in a similar position as the 2019 OFSTED inspection. Although the judgement from OFSTED had not changed since 2019, there had been a significant shift within children’s services.

It was suggested for future reports to include more detail on how the improvements would be implemented. A question was raised on whether the Council received an independent review on the service before the OFSTED inspection and in response the Committee were advised that an external auditor monitored the services. 

Concerns were raised on whether children’s services could tackle the rapid growth of the borough including increasing issues around overcrowding housing. The growth of the borough had proven difficult for the Council to find the necessary level of investment to cope with the level of growth children’s services with experienced staff. Overcrowding in housing would have an impact on families as children would not have their own spaces and their ability to learn would be impeached. There was a vulnerable housing panel that would review the more worrying cases of overcrowding.

Children with disabilities often were more complex and required a multiagency response. Care packages would be more expensive which had impacted the services. There had been a significant increase within the borough with more children required to have an education health care plan, the demand had more than doubled within the past five years.

There was a good working relationship between children’s services and known care homes within the borough. There was a provider quality inspection team that worked across the care sector. However, it is a limited resource, so children’s foster placements had been prioritised. Once an unknown provider had been identified, the Council would attempt to work with the provider and conduct a program of announced and unannounced inspection visits. Recommendations and suspending the use of the premises would be made in instances where the quality of care was below standard. There was a recent change in legislation in which local authorities were not allowed to operate in an unregistered fashion. Local authorities must notify OFSTED if a child was placed in an unregistered placement.

A question was asked on how social workers were managed. The issue was around maintaining a stable management group. The council had embarked on a supervision program that worked with both the social workers and managers to achieve consistency throughout the services. The turnover of social workers was one of the biggest contributing factors to the quality of social work. There were issues around agency staff who had not had the same history with families as council staff and had worked with difference practices and procedures, therefore there was a need for training to be consistent with council staff. There had been recruitment from abroad such as Zimbabwe with the aim to retain staff.

The Youth Justice team worked together with community safety partners and police to help get children to exit gangs. There was a weekly ending gangs and youth violence meeting where the team strategised plans to remove children from gangs. The Council also helped families relocate to other boroughs for safety. However, parents often did not want to relocate due to the disruption of siblings which had resulted with the child in question being placed into care.

Families then had experienced homelessness would bring instability to the children. There was a lot of movement of families with children moving into the borough due to lower costs in housing and rent. Children that had experienced homelessness tended to lose the ability to get school placements straight away therefore they would miss school. The Housing Strategy would need to have children and vulnerable people at the forefront.

There was a recurring theme from the OFSTED reports of 2014, 2019 and 2023 with the judgements such as management oversight being the same. Permanency planning for children’s services was impacted by the courts. To remove a child from the family home was a decision made by the courts, who were still dealing with backlogs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Committee noted the report.

Standing Order 7.1 (Chapter 3, Part 2 of the Council Constitution) was suspended during consideration of this item to enable the meeting to continue beyond the 9pm threshold).