Agenda item

The Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Children and Families and the Assistant Director, Safeguarding Services (Children's Social Care) were invited to the meeting to provide an update on the outcome of Ofsted's fourth monitoring visit which took place on 18 and 19 April and focused on the progress of children in care, in particular placement stability and achieving permanence for young people aged over 16.  Additionally, Ofsted reviewed the quality of practice in the Care Leaver's Service.

The Panel received a presentation from the Assistant Director Safeguarding Services (Children's Social Care).  The feedback from the Ofsted Inspection highlighted the following progress:

·       The quality of support offered to children in care and care leavers had improved. 

·       Corporate Parenting arrangements were now seen to be a strength and in fact had been recommended as good practice to other Local Authorities. Leaders had improved how they listened to children and relevant issues were now discussed at Corporate Parenting Board resulting in a positive impact e.g. Council Tax exemption.

·       A continued commitment to ensuring appropriate financial resources were available for Children's Services was enabling progress to be made.

·       Managers increasingly understood their services and this knowledge was starting to result in improvements in practice.

·       Children and young people were being listened to and staff knew their children well, which had been a major cultural change.

·       Staff welcomed the creation of the new Through Care Service and reported feeling secure and supported through change and were increasing in confidence.

·       Improved performance information was beginning to support learning and a culture of improvement.

·       Management oversight was evident in most cases.

·       Outreach was valued by young people and offered good quality intensive support to young people with complex needs.

·       Evidence of effective partnership working with housing and positive transitions for young people who needed adult social care.

·       The Virtual School Team had been more effective in supporting looked after children (LAC) in education and supporting social workers. Personal Education Plans were being used to provide extra support for young people eg extra tuition.

The areas for further progress and development were:

·       Plans for children were not consistently good quality, lacking analysis, child focus and were not SMART.

·       Transition planning for those leaving care started too late.

·       A small number of children and young people continued to experience changes of worker.

·       Management oversight was not sufficiently robust.

·       Plans and reviews were not sufficiently detailed and good practice was not sufficiently referenced in documents.

·       Dual pathway plans resulted in some duplication.

·       Audits were too focussed on compliance and required greater moderation and reflection of the views of children and parents/carers.

Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and the following main points raised were:

·       the Ofsted feedback letter referred to a small number of children and young people who were continuing to experience changes to social worker, in response to the question about how many 'small' was, in terms of actual numbers of children, the Panel was directed to slide 15 which showed the following detail:

·       73% of social workers were now permanent, which was having the required stabilising effect on the workforce

·       In response to the concern about the 12% LAC in March 2018 who had 3 or more placements, the Panel was advised that this was not necessarily negative, for instance a child may have become looked after as an emergency, then placed with a foster carer and subsequently moved to a permanent placement.  The biggest challenges faced in this area was reducing the number of emergency placements and  enabling foster carers to manage risk

·       In response to the question about whether Ofsted Inspectors talked to parents and carers (including birth families) when gathering evidence, the Panel was advised that generally the Inspectors would speak to foster carers but specifically for this monitoring visit they had not spoken to parents and carers

·       Ofsted reported that following the restructuring of the services to create the Through Care Service, the Children in Care Team Managers received comprehensive and up-to-date performance information and that the improved performance information was beginning to support learning and a culture of improvement among some of the Through Care Service Management Team. At the time of the visit, the care leavers' dashboard was at an early stage of development and not yet providing the same level of understanding.  It was however, confirmed that the care leavers' interactive dashboard was now complete and providing a depth of understanding to Management

·       Ofsted's comment about  Management oversight  not being sufficiently robust, was referring to the need to clearly document on file as evidence, the reflective conversations that Managers were having about cases

·       The Panel was advised that the reference to Social Workers knowing the children they worked with well but not documenting the information in sufficient detail on file was not as a result of lack of staff permanency in the relevant Teams as there was now stability in those Teams

·       District Councils were going to be offered further training in respect of Corporate Parenting

·       A small number of children's plans were written in the first person led by young people, this was a positive step forward and better reflected the young person's voice and perspective. Plans were now in place to try and increase this number further. It was suggested that the format of the Plans was important to ensure they didn’t become a barrier to increasing the number of plans written in this way

·       Although it was important to start transition planning for children leaving care, it was equally important to get the balance right to ensure that this type of planning didn’t have a destabilising effect for children who had often had a traumatic start to life

·       The Panel was concerned that Ofsted had said that in terms of partnership working, health service involvement was not always sufficient for young people with additional health needs.  There were known pressures around some services with high demand eg Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) but ideally all children should be access additional emotional support if needed

·       Further work was needed to ensure that caseloads were weighted and balanced so that social workers and personal advisers were able to meet the complex needs of some young people; the Panel was advised that this was not about needing more social workers but ensuring that the right service was being accessed at the right time.