Agenda item

The Head of Children’s Social Care delivered a presentation on the recent Ofsted inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS), outlining key headlines and themes and providing details of areas identified for improvement (for copy of presentation see file of minutes). 

The report included a graded judgement against three areas: children in need of help and protection; children in care and care leavers and the impact of leaders. 

The Head of Children’s Social Care was pleased to report that overall, services were rated good and the outcome was outstanding in respect of the impact of leaders.  Ofsted acknowledged the work of the Corporate Parenting Panel and the ambitious corporate parenting strategy.

The Panel noted the three areas for improvement were the response to children who go missing from care; sufficiency of short break placements for disabled children and pathway planning for care leavers.  A comprehensive action plan is underway to ensure a robust response to the areas identified for improvement.

The Panel viewed a video giving headline messages from the Ofsted report which included images of artwork produced by the young people involved in  the Artstops project.

In response to comments from Councillor Hunt on the standards and support offered to connected carers with regard to training, unannounced visits, lifestory work and completion of paperwork, the Head of Children’s Social Care replied that standards and commitments are the same for all foster carers, with all foster carers being subject to the same expectations in terms of unannounced visits and the completion of paperwork and lifestory work. A comprehensive review of the training programme had recently been undertaken to ensure the training offer is consistent for all fosters carers and a dedicated connected carers team is in place to offer support to those who may require assistance to access training and support available. With regard to unannounced visits the Head of Children’s Social Care informed the Panel that robust management oversight is in place to ensure the monitoring of unannounced visits. 

An update will be included in the fostering update report which is scheduled for the Panel’s consideration at the September 2022 meeting.

The Chair congratulated staff on achieving the good Ofsted outcome.