Agenda item

Sue Butcher, Director of Children’s Services will provide an update from Ofsted to the Board.

Sue Butcher, Director of Children’s Services provided members of the Corporate Parenting Board with an update from the Ofsted Monitoring visit held in July 2022.

 

The monitoring visit was the fifth visit by Ofsted since the full inspection of Children’s Services in November/December 2019 which judged the service as inadequate overall. (Report published Jan 2020).  Children’s services were give two weeks preparation and the visit took place over 2 days on 13/14^th July 2022. The monitoring visit was undertaken by two inspectors and reviewed the following:

 

•        The front door service that receives contacts and referrals

•        Child protection enquiries,

•        Early help assessments

•        Step-up and step down to early help  

 

The Director outlined the positives and areas that need focus for each area. However the headline findings were as follows:

 

Positives

 

•        Front door services have continued to develop and improve overseen by the Improvement Board

•        Robust and comprehensive quality assurance programme ensures leaders have an accurate understanding of practice and its impact on children and families Expansion of the offer of early help support to vulnerable children

•        Stronger and wider partnerships in the Multi agency children’s hub (MACH)

•        Improving the quality of information,

•        The richness of information-sharing

•        Leading to better informed decision making.

 

 Areas needing focus

 

•        Workforce instability and increased demand in the assessment service have slowed down throughput

•        Additional pressure on some social workers’ caseloads and quality of practice

•        Unfinished assessments and incomplete records have led to delays and risks being fully assessed for some children

 

The Board were advised that the areas needing focus would become part of the refreshed Children’s Services Improvement Plan which was monitored on a six-weekly basis by the Multi-Agency Strategic Improvement Board (MASIB).

 

The most significant area of concern remained the recruitment and retention of experienced, permanent social workers as this affects all of the area needing focus as set out above. Colleagues from Human Resources are reporting to the next MASIB meeting on the continuing efforts to recruit and retain such staff.   Further information on this would be brought back to the Board at a future meeting.

 

Next steps were as follows:

 

·        Next monitoring visit would take place in November 2022 focusing on Care experienced young people.

 

·        Annual engagement conversation (across children’s services) in December 2022.

 

·        Judgement inspection – possible February 2023.

 

·        The Director lastly thanked everyone across the service for their dedication to evident that ‘Middlesbrough Children matter’.   

 

 

Following the presentation, the panel had a conversation regarding social workers and demand on the front door. In May and June they had been significant demand on the service in terms of children’s assessments due to social workers leaving the local authority. Whilst this wasn’t the case in July 2022, Ofsted were made aware of this flux in demand.

 

Another Board member also raised concern about potential future challenges that might hit the service as social world changes and the financial pressures. This in turn would create more demand on social workers.  Whilst it was difficult to predict the future however, the service would look at current demand and look at future recruitment of social workers to try and mitigate the pressures and also continue to encourage collaborative working. The Department of Education had also provided additional funding to assist with pressure.

 

AGREED

That the update be noted.