Meeting documents

To receive an update on the Ofsted Action Plan. The item will be led by the Council’s Acting Assistant Director Community and Strategy, Paul Shallcross.

Note – the Chair will allow 30 minutes for this agenda item.

The Committee received a PowerPoint presentation from the Council’s Acting Director Community and Strategy, Paul Shallcross on the Ofsted action plan and progress made. The Inspection of Children’s Social Care services in July 2022 rated the service Good across the board and the inspection report was published on 21 September 2022.

The presentation covered the two named areas for improvement, which are  – placement sufficiency (which is also a national issue) and which is being considered by the Committee’s Task and Finish Group; the take-up of return to home interviews and which is also being considered as a separate agenda item later at the meeting; and other key areas of focus, such as the early help demand management work and strategy discussions and audit work.

The Committee made a number of comments, which were responded to at the meeting:

·         What is considered to be the biggest area of concern – the focus is on keeping children at home / near to home and out of care, so placement sufficiency, including for emergency admissions, for older children with complex needs, is the biggest area of focus.

·         Query on the membership of Local Family Justice Board – confirmed that involves statutory bodies such as CAFCASS and the local authority.

·         Question on staffing of ‘Homes and Horizons’ workforce / staffing – confirmed the staffing, the majority are residential support workers and that the lead officer is happy with the quality of staff recruited.

·         Strategy discussions and Ofsted view - did not disagree with Ofsted’s assessment / outcome and highlighted the work undertaken and completed post Ofsted to understand the decision making; have updated guidance to First Response Team Managers around clearly identifying the rationale for not proceeding to strategy.

·         Early help – there is huge focus on early help by the Family Intervention Service (FIS); it is essential and value it; work with families on voluntary basis and in the vast majority of cases this happens.

·         Staff turnover in the FIS mentioned, which is causing disruption to families – there has been significant turnover, some is for positive reasons as staff have moved into social work training for example; there has been increase in number of Team Leaders; doing all can but do have high level of turnover; are reviewing pay rates to see if they are competitive.

·         Foster carer recruitment – it is early days but has been significant increase in access to the Fostering website and this will hopefully lead to increase in numbers of Foster Carers.

·         Being a foster carer is a rewarding role and should be championed.

·         Life story work, which is taking place for the majority of children looked after, and if this is available to all our staff so people do not have to repeat themselves causing frustration – confirmed that data base does record it and be more organised and efficient.

It was agreed that the Life Story Work and data around that, will be an agenda item at a future meeting.

On behalf of the Committee, the Chair thanked Mr Shallcross for the update and presentation.