Agenda item

The Panel will receive a presentation on this item from the Divisional Director of Children & Young People Specialist Services.

The Divisional Director for Children & Young People Specialist Services gave a presentation regarding this item, a summary is set out below.

Arrangements for Protection of Children: Ofsted Inspection 4th – 13th March.

Inspection Findings

•  Four domains

–  Overall effectiveness (How well does the Council deliver Protection Services?)

–  Effectiveness of help (Does the service offered meet the assessed need of the CYP?)

–  Quality of practice (Are we efficient, effective and professional?)

–  Leadership and Governance (How well does the Council lead the multi-agency response to Child Protection?)

Judgement: Adequate in all domains

Overall Effectiveness

•  Council and partners have clear strategic focus

•  Improvement in practice is evidenced

•  Good sense of what continues to need to improve

•  Effective political support, good challenge and scrutiny

Effectiveness of Help

•  Council responds in a timely and proportionate manner

•  Council has to develop overarching ‘early help’ strategy

•  Evidence of good outcomes

•  Broad range of services provided/commissioned

•  White British culture and social/economic circumstances not always recognised.

Quality of Practice

•  HMI alert to massive increase of work coming into Duty System therefore concerned re capacity and possible impact on quality of response

•  Decision making timely, robust and evidenced

•  Some inconsistency re timeliness but no concerns re practice decisions

•  Need to tighten up focus of CP Plans

Leadership and Governance

•  Senior leadership focussed and secure

•  CYP Plan very strong

•  Clear lines of accountability

•  Good workforce planning

•  Strong performance management and use of data (needs to be fully bedded in)

Improvements Required

•  Immediately

–  Ensure that all cases that require social work intervention are allocated without significant delay

–  Take action to ensure a consistency of response to new contacts and referrals so that all cases requiring social care involvement are identified and progressed promptly

•  Within three months

–  Ensure that the performance management framework has sufficient focus on qualitative aspects of statutory casework

–  Ensure that weaknesses that have been identified by the local authority in relation to assessments, case conferences and children’s plans are addressed

•  Within six months

–  Evaluate the impact of early help services and ensure an

overarching strategy for early help is in place

Improvement Board

•  First meeting 2^nd July

•  Improvement Plan written and agreed with Senior Management Team.

•  Improvement board will include front line Social Workers, and staff from Preventative services.

•  Reference group of ex- service users to assist in this process. 

Key Areas for Improvement

•  Quality and Consistency of Assessments

•  Quality and Consistency of Plans for Young People.

•  Expand the availability and consideration of Advocacy for Young People

•  Improving the analysis of/consideration of cultural needs for young people.

•  Improving service-user feed-back 

Councillor Liz Hardman asked if the department were disappointed in the judgement and had enough staff.

The Divisional Director for Children & Young People Specialist Services replied that the department was reasonably resourced and was able to accept the judgement considering that the bar for inspections had been raised by Ofsted.

The Divisional Director for Preventative Services added that approximately 40 inspections had taken place under the new Ofsted framework and only 2 had been judged as good. None had been judged as outstanding with 17 being judged as inadequate.

The Chair thanked the officers for their work and the presentation and commented that she would be willing to receive further updates on the matter in the future.