Decision details

Geoff Little, Chief Executive of Bury Council, provided an update on the progress of the Children’s Services Improvement Programme, which focused on the verbal feedback received after the 2-day monitoring visit that had taken place last week. It was noted that the verbal feedback might differ from the formal written feedback that would be included in a Cabinet report in November. The monitoring visit was effectively to a mini inspection, with the Ofsted inspection team speaking to social workers and senior leaders in the department, as well as going through records of individual cases and viewing a range of documents.

Scope

The inspection team were looking at quality and impact of plans that related to individual children and their families, in particular cases that were stepped up to Children In Need from Child Protection, and the process of how cases were stepped up and down from work preceding court proceedings. They also looked at children where risk had escalated to the point of family breakdown. In looking at those areas they triangulated improvements made in the service as a whole, including workforce, performance management, management oversight and supervision, and quality assurance.

Key findings

·         No cases of children at immediate risk of harm

·         Most cases were being held at the right level of threshold

·         No formal escalations of cases from the inspectors to the management team

Overall, the inspection team acknowledged we had now established a permanent leadership team that fully understood the issues faced and knew the improvement journey would take time. Recognition was received from the team that we are going in the right direction, that we have established foundations of support for improvement, and that leadership is visible. The inspection team saw pockets of improvement in practice, demonstrating that frontline practice is starting to improve.

The most important issue raised was already known: workforce. Caseloads were too high, the number of social workers that children see was changing too frequently, and there was too high a proportion of agency staff leading to drift and delay in cases being dealt with. We were able to show inspectors we have made progress in overall staffing levels, that we are recruiting more staff, working on recruitment from abroad, improvements to the level and quality of business support (so social workers could focus on cases), and how we are further increasing, in some areas, rates of pay to attract social workers. The inspection team also noted the support the wider Council was giving to the department, the investment being put in to radically change the structure of the department and increase the number of posts. It was noted that supervision in some of our internal teams was inconsistent and variable and needed further work (which had begun).

Geoff outlined five areas of detail:

·         Quality assurance – the framework we had adopted since the inspection was now working and enabled us to gather evidence of impact of practice. However it wasn’t always being used consistently to record the views of children and families, and opportunities were still being missed to listen to children in that process. But overall a significant improvement was noted in quality assurance.

·         How Children In Need cases are stepped up into Child Protection Plans was seen as appropriate. Better practice was noted in the way we are working with our partners in strategy meetings, though not as evident in child protection meetings, and there were still issues regarding high levels of agency staff and children seeing too many different social workers.

·         Pre court proceedings stage – improvements had been made, and the number of cases in this part of the system had increased, doubling since the original inspection. This was positive progress as we were intervening when things getting worse, and cases then stepped down after action was taken was at 65%. However, there was still some drift and delay owing to access to the right specialist services (e.g. therapy or domestic abuse services)

·         Where cases were stepped down from Children In Need to Early Help, inspectors saw a clear focus on the need and the services to be delivered, and that was happening at the right level and in the right way to support changes in families. Good, shared decision making was also noted.

·         With regards to children being under the disability team, although only a small sample of cases were looked at, most were found to have good, up to date assessments of need, the worries of parents about their children were well considered, and plans for the children were up to date with good partner agency processes in forming those plans. However, the daily lived experience of children wasn’t always sufficiently reflected.

Overall, Geoff advised that verbal feedback showed we are on the right path and that the direction of travel was good. It was noted that written feedback yet to be received might differ, but it was hoped that it would show we have the firm basis for improvement.

Decision:

Cabinet noted the update.

Reasons for the decision:

This update was provided in response to a resolution of Council at the meeting held on

19 January 2022.

Other options considered and rejected:

N/A