Agenda item

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, the Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education presented a report outlining the progress made in the delivery of the Children Integrated Services Improvement Plan. Sarah Nardone, Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services and Education, and Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services were also in attendance to provide additional details. They highlighted the following information:

a)  The last Ofsted monitoring visit took place in November 2024 focusing on Children in Care and met with the Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education as well as care leavers during the visit. Feedback from the inspection was broadly as expected. This was the last in the series of monitoring visits and a full Ofsted inspection is expected in late 2025.

b)  This inspection visit considered a wide range of elements, including children in need assessments, plan reviews, plans visits and support for carers, management oversight, performance and stability of the workforce and revisited the areas from the first monitoring visit.

c)  The inspection team found that there had been sustained progress in the improvement journey despite financial pressures and changes to leadership. The newly appointed leadership roles were found to already be having a positive impact on both staff and improving outcomes for children as a result.

d)  The visit found that children were entering care at the right time and whilst there were some ongoing issues around planning and assessments these had been identified by the Council and work was underway to rectify that. Permanency planning for adoption was found to be effective, with work ongoing around permanency other than adoption to be brought up to the same level of efficiency.

e)  Workforce stability has increased and for many children this has meant that they have built a positive relationship with their social worker. However, there is additional work to do to ensure that this is the experience for all children. Staff are reporting that they feel better supported, have reduced caseloads and can spend more time with the children they support.

f)  Areas identified for focused work to drive further improvement include consistency of assessments across the service and delays to permanency planning for non-adoption plans. Delays in discharge of Care Orders can impact sufficiency of placements.

Committee Members agreed that the update paints a mostly positive picture and were pleased with the progress being made within the Service. During discussion the following questions were asked and additional information was provided:

g)  Committee Members asked whether the issues with sufficiency were leading to the use of un-registered children’s homes, and what alternatives have been considered. The number of children in unregistered children’s homes has reduced by about 50% since the Committee last discussed the issue, the number is now under 5 children, and all are placed within Nottingham City. The team work hard to keep reducing that number further. These children have an additional number of visits and extra support management in place whilst they are in unregistered placements. Using unregistered placements as a last option and the increase monitoring and support ensures that the child is safe.

h)  Placement sufficiency is a national issue and work is underway with commissioning colleagues to look at a review of placement profiles for children after initial success with a trial. The Fostering East Midlands Service has been established and is in its infancy. Councillors will have received a suite of information around fostering and promoting fostering for the Council. There is also work underway with private fostering agencies and with children’s homes within the City to review current placement and potential placements to ensure that children are in the right placement to help them thrive in care, moving on to foster care when appropriate. Demand for private care placements continues to outstrip supply and so private care providers can pick and choose which children they accept meaning more complex cases are harder to find good fit placements for. Despite having a good number of children’s homes within the City, as they are private, they accept many children from elsewhere.

i)  Committee Members asked how confident the Service was that a better rating would be reported by Ofsted after the next full inspection. Feedback from the monitoring visits show that the Council is moving in the right direction and that there is further improvement work planned to continue to transform and improve the services. There will always be work to do to continually improve and adapt services but the Council has been able to identify these, and no areas needing additional work were identified by the monitoring visits that the Council had not already picked up and started to address.

j)  Committee Members asked about social work staffing levels. Staffing levels are now much improved compared to 12 months ago, resulting in lower case loads, better supervision and management oversight, all of which leads to better outcomes for children. There are advancements being made in technology meaning that important tasks like note writing and recording is being made easier and more efficient and reducing duplication increasing the time social workers can spend with children. Caseloads are considered about right for the workforce at present, and currently sit just below the national average, which is a marked improvement from the original inspection. Staff retention has also improved with reduced reliance on agency staff and better continuity of supervision for children.

The Chair thanked the Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education, the Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services and Education, and the Director for Children’s Integrated Services for attending the meeting and for providing responses to the questions put to them by the Committee.