Issue - meetings

The Deputy Mayor and Executive Member for Children's Services and the Executive Director of Children’s Services submitted a report for the Executive’s consideration. The purpose of the report was to provide information on the progress made against the Children’s Services Improvement Plan, with particular reference to the findings of Ofsted’s Monitoring Visit on 29/30 March 2022.

Ofsted had undertaken a Monitoring Visit to Children’s Services on 29/30 March focusing on matching, placement and decision-making for children in care and planning and achieving permanence (forever homes) for children. The letter reporting Ofsted’s findings, which were generally very positive, was published on 6 May 2022. A brief overview of Ofsted’s findings was detailed in the main body of the submitted report.

The most significant risks to continued improvement and delivering against the Children’s Services Improvement Plan were:

·         The challenge of recruiting permanent experienced social work staff. Currently, 26% of social work staff were agency workers with the resulting additional staffing costs. However, 52% of those staff members had been working in Middlesbrough for over one year. That in itself brought some stability into the workforce and mitigated against changes of social workers for children.

·         Maintaining the pace of improvement despite financial constraints, for example continuing to fund the Practice Leads and colleagues from Audit to Excellence.

Ofsted was due to return for the next Monitoring Visit in July 2022. It was envisaged that the visit would focus on the Council’s Early Help Service, the Multi-Agency Children’s Hub (MACH) and the Assessment Service.

OPTIONS

It was not appropriate to retain the status quo, as Children’s Services would not have been meeting the needs of Middlesbrough’s most vulnerable children.

ORDERED

1.     That the progress made to improve outcomes for Middlesbrough’s vulnerable children, as set out in our Children’s Services Improvement plan 2020/2023, be noted.

2.     That the effect of the work on Children’s Services’ mission, namely ‘Our Mission to Show Middlesbrough Children that they Matter’, be noted.

REASON

Although a decision was not required, if Children’s Services did not make the required improvements as set out in the Children’s Services Improvement Plan, at pace, the Council would not improve life chances for Middlesbrough’s vulnerable children and increase its Ofsted judgement from its current ‘Inadequate’ status.