Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy and Resources

Councillor David Mellen, Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years introduced a report on the Ofsted framework and thematic inspections. Helen Blackman, Director of Children’s Integrated Services and Sophie Russell, Head of Children’s Strategy and Improvement outlined the main findings of the pilot inspection, highlighting the following points:

(a)  For 2 weeks at the end of January 2017 a team of Ofsted inspectors conducted an inspection of Nottingham City Council’s Children’s Services piloting the new framework focusing far more on the journey of the child and looking in depth at 274 case;

(b)  as the inspection was voluntary the results and final report will not be published but the Council are permitted to release the results, which it will do at an appropriate opportunity;

(c)  the inspectors recognised the impact of changes made since the last inspection in 2014, most notably all services being bought under one Director and all first contact coming through a multi-agency hub;

(d)  the inspectors praised Nottingham City Council for the strong corporate and political support for Children’s Services ensuring that children’s needs are prioritised. They stated that significant progress has been achieved from the previous inspection in 2014 when the Council was judged to require improvement;

(e)  in the pilot inspection framework there are now 4 areas of judgement:

·  The impact of leaders on practice with children and families, in which the Council was judged as good;

·  The experiences and progress of children who need help and protection, in which the Council was judged as good;

·  The experiences and progress of children looked after and care leavers achieving permanence, in which the Council was judged as requiring improvement;

·  Overall effectiveness, in which the Council was judged as good;

(f)  the key areas of positive feedback were:

·  The creation of one directorate being the catalyst for subsequent improvements;

·  There is good involvement in, and use of, regional interactions, peer review and learning;

·  The over recruitment of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSW) was a sound decision and the induction process is strong with staff giving positive feedback. It was noted that Nottingham City Council is becoming an employer of choice for Social Workers in the region;

·  Good and outstanding social work can flourish within Nottingham City and there are a number of examples of both;

·  The diversity of the community is well understood and services fit well;

·  Voice of the Child is a real strength;

·  Ability to access Early Help services means that risks are being reduced;

·  The introduction of the Integrated Locality hubs look to strengthen multi-agency work;

·  Assessments of children’s needs are consistently good leading to meaningful plans;

·  Support for disabled children is good and services provided are tailored to their needs;

·  The Multi systemic therapy and Edge of Care Hub show creative use of resources and work to reduce the numbers of children in care;

·  Social Workers know their children well;

·  Carers are seen as ambitious and proud of their young people and their needs are well considered;

·  Educational outcomes are improving;

·  Early Help services are seen as outstanding;

(g)  There are some areas that the Council has been challenged to improve, although these represent very small proportion of cases,  these are:

·  To have a more robust response to 16-17 year olds who present as homeless:

oThere were very small number of cases where more thorough consideration could have been given to alternative options;

·  To be more tenacious in order to sustain contact with care leavers not currently engaged with the Council:

oThis relates to a very small cohort of care leavers who have clearly stated that they do not wish to have further contact with the Council and the care leavers services provided;

·  To develop a better understanding of why children go missing and ensure they receive the help that they need:

oAttention is being focused on being more proactive before a child goes missing;

·  Independent reviewing Officer capacity could still be improved:

oThe Council have invested in additional resources and created new posts to help alleviate the workload pressure on independent reviewing officers, however to offer further resilience further posts should be considered;

·  To bring better consistency in setting clear expectations  for responses from partner agencies:

oThere are a small number of cases where the Council has not been as consistent in setting expectations which can be improved;

·  Partners, particularly schools and Police to contribute in a timely manner to initial fact finding/assessments and plans:

oPolice have requested and are receiving additional resources to provide this timely response. Police staff will be moving in to the Early work hub in June;

·  Case file audit arrangements should be strengthened for Children’s Social Care:

oThere is already a rigorous audit process in place, but emphasis should also be placed on audit and review at all levels, this is being worked into work methods throughout Children’s social care;

(h)  as this was a pilot inspection and on a voluntary basis the Council can expect to have a full inspection in around 12 months’ time;

Following comments and questions from the Committee the following further information was highlighted:

(i)  work with children and young people starts very early to prepare them to transition from being cared for to being a care leaver. The vast majority of care leavers maintain contact with their personal advisor after turning 18 but a very small cohort of care leavers, approximately 6%, choose not to engage further for a variety of reasons, they may be unaccompanied asylum seekers who have exhausted options to stay in the country and do not want contact with any service or authority, they may have received a custodial sentence of more the three months which automatically gives them cared for status despite never having been cared for by the Council;

(j)   there is a fine balance to be struck between being tenacious in maintaining contact and respecting the privacy and the wishes of the care leaver. Improvements to some recording and clarity in records of attempts to contact the care leaver will help to push the Council’s grading into good as will trying a range of communication methods;

(k)  there is no alert system which notifies the Personal Advisors if housing placement starts to break down or rent arrears start to build up once the young person leaves care, however as the vast majority of care leavers still have contact with their personal advisors they are able to access help and advice at an early stage;

(l)  the Council’s payments to foster carers has recently increased and is now much closer to that of the Independent Fostering Agencies (IFA’s). A recent piece of work showed that the difference in the fee paid to carers was around £11 a week;

(m)   the Council continue to advertise on the Internet and on social media for foster carers. The Council’s website pages dedicated to fostering and adoption are due to be refreshed and updated;

(n)  Social Workers caseloads continue to be slightly higher than recommended. The Council aim for a caseload of between 18-23 cases, but the average caseload is closer to the mid 20’s at present. However with continued recruitment, of NQS’s as well as fast track recruitment of more experienced Social Workers, this is beginning to reduce;

(o)  there are regular meeting of school safeguarding leads and Council safeguarding staff. These are very well attended, usually around 90% schools are represented. This feeds very well into the joint work on safeguarding;

(p)  the inspection did not highlight any issues that the Council were not aware of. If Children’s Services continue on the same course, implement the changes suggested and meet the challenges set by Ofsted then the Council can work towards achieving a grade of “good” at the next inspection with various areas of work having the potential to be graded as “outstanding”;

(q)  performance indicators show that Nottingham City Council is successful in helping care leavers into work, training or education. The Virtual school is going to be recruiting further staff to offer more intense support around education for 16 and 17 year olds.

RESOLVED to

(1)  thank Councillor David Mellen, Helen Blackman and Sophie Russell for their attendance and the update on the OSTED framework and thematic Inspection;

(2)  note the content of the presentation;

(3)  consider the service provision for Care Leavers during 2017/18.