Agenda item - Children’s Services Ofsted inspection and review of Local Safeguarding Children Board 2015

Report of the Executive Director for Children’s Services (copy attached).

13.1         The Executive Director for Children’s Services introduced the paper which provided an update on the recent Children’s Services Ofsted inspection and detailed the proposed action plan resulting from the inspection report.  He noted that overall the report was positive having looked at around 200 cases of looked after children and met with parents, grandparents, adopters, carers and young people.  The finding was one of requiring improvement to be good, but a number of actions had already been identified and put in place.

13.2         The LSCB Business Manager stated that the review of safeguarding had come out as good and this reflected the journey that had been undertaken over the past year.  There had been changes to the governance arrangements which were more transparent and the Inspector’s recommendations had already been built into the action plan.  She noted that the Inspection team had commented on how well developed the CSE approach was in the city.

13.3         The Executive Director for Children’s Services noted that a re-inspection was expected for 2018, although the current framework was under review and may look rather different.  The main concern had been around front-line arrangements and a consultation on changes to this had finished and was due to be implemented which would see social workers within smaller teams and working with young people throughout their lives rather than being split between specific age groups.

13.4         Frances McCabe referred to the number of looked after children and queried how this compared with other authorities and how the level of placements outside of the city was being addressed.

13.5         The Executive Director for Children’s Services noted that the council had been found to be good by the Inspectors in terms of looked after children.  The council had a higher number of young people in care compared to its statistical neighbours but that had always been the case and in fact numbers were increasing across the country.  The vast majority of placements were within a 20mile radius of the city centre and work was ongoing to reduce the number beyond that down.  There were regular review meetings and more robust arrangements to track children through their educational life were being implemented as part of the action plan.

13.6         RESOLVED:

(1)       That the Ofsted report listed as appendix 1 to the paper be noted; and

(2)       That the Local Authority post Ofsted action plan as detailed in appendix 2 to the paper be noted.