Agenda item

Councillor Barnard, Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People, Catherine Underwood, Corporate Director for People, and Tajinder Madahar, Head of Service for Children’s Social Work, presented a report updating the Committee on the outcomes from Ofsted’s Focussed Visit in February 2020 and associated improvement programme.  They highlighted the following information:

(a)  Ofsted’s Focussed Visit looked specifically at arrangements for children in need and those subject to a child protection plan, with a focus on children at risk of neglect as these had previously been identified by Ofsted as areas of concern.

(b)  Focussed Visits do not result in a rating but Ofsted issued two Priority Actions which is significant.

(c)  The Service is committed to addressing the issues and strong oversight and support has been put in place to progress improvement work.

(d)  Following the Visit, swift action was taken to review the areas of concern.  Ofsted don’t formally sign off action plans but their feedback on the improvement plan was sought.  An ongoing dialogue with Ofsted is taking place, with informal conversations held every week.

(e)  A Children at the Heart Improvement Board has been established, chaired by the Interim Chief Executive and involving councillors, senior officers and partners including schools, health and the police.  The role of the Board is to hold to account and challenge progress on improvement, but also support improvement work. 

(f)  Working with partners is vital for the improvement work because although the Priority Actions were directed at the Council they relate to services delivered in partnership with other service areas within the Council and partners external to the Council.

(g)  Regional colleagues are supporting the Service to reflect and learn, and the Council is also working with the Local Government Association and Department for Education.  Through the Department for Education, the Council is getting improvement support from the Partner in Practice Scheme.  As part of this the Council is getting substantial support from Essex County Council to help strength practice and services.

(h)  One of the key areas to address is stabilising the workforce.  Workforce gaps have been filled through use of a recruitment agency and this has provided short term capacity, and work is now taking place to recruit substantive post-holders. 

(i)  The Nottingham practice model and standards have been relaunched and everyone is being trained to these standards.  A strengths-based approach is being taken. 

(j)  Ensuring that the voice of the child is at the heart of services is being re-energised.  Work is taking place to test that this is in place.

(k)  The performance and quality assurance framework is being improved to include a strong moderation process and make sure that learning from audits is fully understood and used to inform best practice services. 

(l)  Going forward there will be a refreshed social worker recruitment campaign to try and attract permanent social workers that want to stay in the service and develop as part of a great team.  Part of this will include developing an attractive and supportive workforce development offer.

(m)The role of Principal Social Worker is being created, who will be an expert practitioner able to provide advice, leadership and mentor colleagues. 

(n)  Standards are being developed so that everyone knows what ‘good’ looks like.  This will inform management standards that set out a clear and consistent understanding of expectations.

(o)  Work is also planned to look at the other associated factors that enable social workers to do the best job that they can, for example good IT support, good business administration support. 

(p)  This is a really major programme of cultural and practice change and there are a number of risks to its delivery.

(q)  The current coronavirus outbreak has impacted on improvement work and it has been challenging to deal with both really significant issues at the same time and ensure a continued strong focus on progressing improvement activity. 

(r)  The Council’s financial situation is also a risk and lack of workforce capacity relates to lack of funding. 

(s)  Most activity remains on target but some areas are slipping behind. 

(t)  It is anticipated that Ofsted will visit in autumn 2020 with a full inspection in 2021.  It is important that the Council can demonstrate improvement and get quality assurance, but learning from Essex County Council is that improvement takes a long time.

(u)  It is vital that the Council ensures that it meets its statutory responsibilities, otherwise the Government will intervene.

During discussion the following points were raised:

(v)  The Council has provided short-term funding to deliver improvement but it will be challenging when this ends and there are risks to the delivery of long-term sustained improvement. 

(w)  Nationally, there are issues with funding for children’s social care and the Council is involved in lobbying for more funding.

(x)  The ‘Grow Your Own’ social worker scheme has been really successful.  The most recent cohort has all just passed and are at various stages of registration so agency workers will need to be retained until they are able to practice.  There is already interest in the next phase and the Service wants to continue doing it, but its launch is affected by budget challenges. 

(y)  It is important that new social workers are supported to develop and work in an environment of best practice and there needs to be quality control in place to ensure this is happening.  Ofsted found that over time not all social workers are kept on a journey of continued improvement and the Council now needs to make a commitment to do this.  Workshops are being held for newly qualified staff and qualified staff to increase knowledge, develop skills and provide a safe environment to reflect.

(z)  While many staff are working at home, managers are keeping in touch with teams on MS Teams, holding reflective sessions and auditing cases to identify areas for improvement. 

(aa)  Lessons are being learnt from Essex County Council about the importance of good auditing.

(bb)  The Council has an online performance system showing performance by case, practitioner and service area.  Performance is monitored closely to identify areas of concern and practitioners are held to account in 1:1s and in team supervision sessions.  Statutory reporting to the Department for Education takes place regularly.

(cc)  It is anticipated that Ofsted will be looking at the experience of children during the coronavirus outbreak and how services have responded.  The Service is confident that it will be able to show how Nottingham has responded, that robust decision making is in place and services are in place.

(dd)  The Service will also be able to show that it is focussed and committed to improving practice and increasing capacity.  There are some examples of this already coming through in practice and colleagues should be able to articulate the changes in relation to their work, but it is still early days so it won’t be possible to demonstrate this across all work by autumn. 

(ee)  It will be important to get feedback from children and families on changes as evidence of improvement. 

The Committee requested that outcomes of the Ofsted assurance visit in autumn 2020 and progress on the improvement plan be reported back to the Committee.