Agenda item

Presentation

Ailsa Barr, Director of Children’s Integrated Services, delivered the presentation, highlighting the following points:

a)  OFSTED most recently undertook a full inspection of Children’s Services in July 2022, primarily focusing on the delivery of services to Children in Need, children with a Child Protection Plan, children in care and care leavers. At that time OFSTED rated the service inadequate, and gave guidance on what needed to be improved. This presentation gives an overview of the improvement work undertaken by Children’s Services, including an update from the last OFSTED monitoring visit which took place in November 2023;

b)  OFSTED highlighted eight areas requiring attention:

  i.  the point a referral is first made to Children’s Services;

  ii.  management oversight and direction of front-line work, including management oversight in relation to the designated officer role;

  iii.  sustaining social work capacity;

  iv.  the sufficiency of placements, particularly for those with complex needs;

  v.  services for care leavers aged 21 and over, while the duty of responsibility has been extended for care leavers up to the age of 25;

  vi.  duties in relation to young people aged 16 and 17 who present as homeless;

  vii.  the quality and timeliness of return home interviews for children who go missing;

  viii.  oversight of children who are missing from education and those electively home educated.

c)  An action plan was submitted in December 2022, within the time set, with oversight from the Children’s Improvement Board, which now has the support of an independent improvement advisor appointed by the Department for Education, who Chairs the Board;

d)  any local authority with an ‘inadequate’ rating will have a period of monitoring visits undertaken by OFSTED staff. Nottingham has received three two-day visits since the full inspection, with a fourth expected shortly. These focused on:

  i.  February 2023 – Front Door activity, (MASH, Duty social workers, and the emergency duty team);

  ii.  July 2023 – Children with a Children in Needs plan or a Child Protection plan, focusing primarily on the field work social work service;

  iii.  November 2023 – care leavers over the age of 18.

These inspections are not graded, but there is a clear narrative report published on the OFSTED website and available from Children’s Services;

e)  common areas of progress have been identified across the monitoring visits. Inspectors have seen a clear link between the service’s transformation work and its improvement activity, leading to improvements in the quality of practice and the experience of practitioners. There has been an investment in posts, increasing front-line and management capacity (for example, in the first response and missing from home services, the care leavers service, and the children in care service), alongside some reduced capacity in areas where demand has reduced (such as in child protection);

f)  inspectors spend little time with senior managers, spending the majority of the visit speaking to front-line practitioners and looking through casework. Feedback from the workforce is that they feel generally supported by managers and can feel in the impact of reduced caseloads, developing stronger and more meaningful relationships with children and young people;

g)  it has been recognised that there is a committed senior leadership team, with strong knowledge and oversight of the service. The quality assurance framework has been strengthened, and correctly identifies areas of improvement and development;

h)  common areas of development have also been identified. The quality of assessments and plans is inconsistent. Some children and young people experience too many changes of social worker, linked to staff instability, though this has improved significantly in parts of the service. There is inconsistency in the frequency and quality of supervision, though the workforce describes feeling supported, this is not always translated into written work on case files or linked directly to positive outcomes. There is further work to be done with partners to avoid delays in assessment and intervention;

i)  the presentation gives a visual representation of the service improvement plan, with ‘Changing Lives. Changing Futures.’ as its strapline. The plan is underpinned by the Together for Nottingham plan, the Strategic Council plan, and regulatory oversight by OFSTED. The aim is to create structural arrangements which drive sustainably improved and financially secure services. There are two major streams to the plan – service development and practice improvement, and the transformation projects, which sit alongside each other and become increasingly connected;

j)  the presentation includes graphs showing the impact of improvement and transformation work on various metrics. The percentage of Child Protection plans open for two or more years has fallen since January 2022, and their average duration has fallen. The total numbers of Child Protection and Child in Need plans have also fallen;

k)  modernising the fostering service is a key area of improvement and transformation. When children come into care, they are typically placed either in foster care or in a residential home. Nottingham aspires to have the majority of children in care living in foster homes if they cannot live with their family. Local authorities use a mixture of in-house foster carers and those recruited by independent agencies. In Nottingham the proportion of external placements grew too high, but this is being redressed through improved recruitment, retention, and utilisation of foster placements;

l)  a lot of work has been undertaken regarding the recruitment and retention of staff. Children’s Services has improved its advertising and social media presence, embarked on a rolling programme of recruitment, and streamlined its recruitment processes. The team is starting to see recruitment of experienced social workers, and conversion of agency social workers to being permanent staff members. The result is a reduction in the service’s reliance on agency staff in some teams, a reduction in caseloads, and better opportunities for learning and development;

m)  there has been an improvement in support and resources provided to staff across Children’s Services who work directly with children, including the ‘worry monster’ tool and a suite of thinking tools;

n)  the service has focused on celebrating success, with a monthly shout out awards to staff exhibiting excellent practice, and an annual celebration event, ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward’;

o)  these changes have contributed to a noticeable change in the culture of the service. There is a greater focus on data, with new dashboards enabling a visual overview of the service’s work. The service feels more connected, staff feel more confident, and there is a greater culture of learning;

p)  the next steps are to continue to improve and transform the service. This includes continuing to develop consistency of practice through learning and development resources, embedding quality assurance and audit work to drive improvement, learning from service users more effectively to shape delivery of services, and working more closely with partners to embed the Early Help strategy and the Thresholds of Need model to ensure timely support to families. The team will continue to review its recruitment and retention strategies, and use data to profile future workloads, making sure resources are directed in the right areas;

q)  the service is preparing for the next monitoring visit, focused on Children in Care. A further visit is expected before the summer holidays, and then at least one more between September and December.

The Board thanked Ailsa Barr for the presentation.