Agenda item

Report of the Director for Children’s Integrated Services

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education introduced the item updating the Committee on the most recent Ofsted monitoring visit in April 2024 looking at Children in Care services. Ailsa Barr, Director of Children’s Integrated Services was also in attendance to give additional detail. Members noted that the letter highlighting the findings of the visit had been published this morning. They highlighted the following points:

a)  Inspectors felt that the improvements seen in other areas within Children’s Services inspired confidence that changes within the Children in Care Team workforce would lead to improved practice, once the recent investment had matured.

b)  The most recent monitoring visit found that additional funding, management and social work positions have built on improvements since the last visit and have helped to stabilise the workforce. Staff feel more supported and the frequency and quality of supervision is showing signs of improvement.

c)  There is still some inconsistency in practice, with better quality practice being seen in fieldwork teams. Investment into the Children in Care teams is very recent and the impact of that is yet to flow through to data although there is a good level of confidence that this improvement will be seen.

d)  Changes to social workers and higher work loads in the Children in Care Teams does impact on relationship building between social workers and children. Although visits meet statutory requirements for frequency they are not informed by individual need. The recent investment in the Children in Care team will help to address this.

e)  Creative planning and support around risk management is present throughout the fieldwork teams, with child centred decisions being evident following thorough assessment. More work needs to be done to ensure that routine assessments are updated, within the Children in Care Teams, when a child’s situation changes, and that specialist assessments are more routinely undertaken to inform risk management and planning.

f)  There are ongoing challenges around the number of foster carers meaning that children are sometimes moving into residential care rather than a family setting, this is seen nationally and is not unique to Nottingham City. Work is underway with the County Council and other neighbouring authorities to establish a regional fostering network.

g)  Children are positive and encouraged to engage with their education planning meetings. Some children do face moving schools due to placement sufficiency issues meaning it is sometimes not possible to prioritise education placement.

h)  Work by senior leaders with health colleagues has helped develop an improvement in the process around health checks for children coming into care. More work needs to be done to ensure that these changes are consistent.

i)  The next monitoring visit will likely focus on front door services again. 6 monitoring visits is usual for an improvement journey, with a full inspection typically taking place 6 months after the final monitoring visit, however these would depend on other activity being undertaken by Ofsted.

The following points were raised in discussion:

j)  Committee members asked how the impact of the improvements was being measured. The performance dashboard has recently been improved to better allow managers to monitor performance against targets for all aspects of work, including timeliness of assessments and reviews. It can be used to assess overall team performance. The information on the dashboard only provided quantitative data, and does not address the quality of the data, which is why a separate programme of work runs alongside it. This is then sampled by the inspectors as part of the monitoring visits.

k)  Committee members asked for more information about unregistered homes and what additional checks, if any, were carried out to ensure they were suitable for placements. Unregistered homes are homes that are not registered with Ofsted. However, Ofsted still inspect them, and when a child is placed in an unregistered home the Authority perform a number of stringent checks before placement and throughout the placement, and social workers will be in touch with the child more often than those placed in registered homes. As part of the market sufficiency work the Council is currently working with a number of homes to help them qualify for registration.

l)  Committee members asked for additional details about the Health Checks and monitoring done on their timeliness. The timeliness of the health reviews is monitored with health colleagues and the amount of time a review is overdue is also recorded, although the details of this breakdown is not available at committee. This delay in health checks is a national issue, and the Council is working hard to mitigate against delays. Health colleagues are linking in with other Local Authorities to learn what works best in other areas to bring back ideas to be adapted to Nottingham’s needs.

m)  Committee members asked what the service was doing to improve the use of the child’s voice in the development and improvement of services. Over the next 6 months or so there will be an increased focus on participation of the child. There will be a continued push to include children in planning and reviewing their care. Work will be undertaken to increase the reach of the Child in Care and its work will be promoted more widely.

n)  Committee members asked what support and monitoring was done when a child is placed within a Special Guardianship Order (SGO). When a child leaves care into a SGO the Special Guardian becomes the parent of the child, and there is no legal requirement for ongoing monitoring. Extensive assessments are completed prior to the order being made at Court. There is a requirement to continue to offer support for the SGO, and the team responsible is liaising with other local authorities around examples of best practice that can be adapted for Nottingham City to develop a clear offer and more coherent set of services. Consideration is already taking place around staffing restructure to support the coordination of these services. 

o)  Committee members asked if the same level of support and monitoring was in place for children in placements away from Nottingham as those placed within Nottingham. Where a child is placed into an SGO outside of Nottingham some responsibilities transfer to the host authority, and it becomes the responsibility of the SGO family to access those. Some stay with the City, the more therapeutic based services, for example, and the workers link with services in the host authority and refers into those. The SGO family can ask for a reassessment of needs if necessary. After three years all responsibility transfers to the host authority.

Resolved to request further details and data on child health assessments.