43 Children's Services Improvement Programme: Overview of Progress February 2021 - July 2021 PDF 405 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
The
Mayor and Lead Member for Children’s Social Care, Adult Social Care and Public
Health and the Executive Director of Children’s Services submitted a report for
the Executive’s consideration.
The
purpose of the report was to provide an overview of the work undertaken from
February 2021 to July 2021 in line with the Children’s Services Improvement
Plan 2020/21 and 2021/22.
The
most significant events to report were a focussed visit from Ofsted on 26 and
27 May 2021 and a visit from the Commissioner during the week commencing 12
July.
Following
Middlesbrough’s focussed visit, a selection of key points were made by Ofsted,
which included:
·
Leaders
appropriately prioritised recruitment and the development of the workforce
strategy.
·
Workers
were persistent and built good relationships with children, so interventions
were more effective.
·
Staff
reported feeling supported, liked working for Middlesbrough and understood the
vision for change.
·
Caseloads
were reducing but remained too high for some social workers.
·
The
quality of practice was variable and did not meet leader’s expectations.
·
Some
children experienced too many changes of social worker. Children told inspectors
that they would have liked a social worker who stayed with them for a long
time.
·
There
was a significant focus on Children Missing Education.
·
A
minority of Looked after Children were on reduced timetables or had no
education for too long.
Following
the visit, the inspectors had made two recommendations, in addition to those
made at the time of the 2019 inspection, namely:
·
To
improve management oversight and actions to ensure that vulnerable children and
children in care, including those with special needs and/or disabilities
(SEND), receive their full educational entitlement
·
To
improve the understanding of identity and the diverse needs of children and
their families to inform assessment, planning and support.
With
regard to the visit from the Commissioner, the Commissioner had stated that “considerable progress has been made and
there is evidence of real impact” and a recommendation would be put forward
that “no further direct engagement of an
appointed commissioner is required and continued monitoring and support to
improvement is afforded by the Improvement Adviser and the core DfE team”.
It was planned
that the recommendation would be presented to the Minister on 8 September, for
a decision to be made by 15 September 2021.
Further
information on the feedback received from Ofsted, and the Commissioner, was
detailed at paragraphs 5 to 13 of the submitted report.
ORDERED
That the overview of
the strategic and operational work, undertaken between February 2021 and July
2021 in line with the Children’s Services Improvement Action Plan 2020/21 and
2021/22, be noted.
REASON
To ensure Executive
Members were fully appraised of the work to improve outcomes for vulnerable
children in Middlesbrough and were able to hold officers to account when progress
was not made as planned.