Agenda item

Report of the Director of Children's Services. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Children, Schools, and Families.

Haringey Children’s Social Care Service was inspected by Ofsted between 13 and 24 February. The inspection took place in accordance with legislation and the new Ofsted inspection framework that became operational in December 2022.  The findings from the inspection were published on 11 April 2023.

The Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Families introduced the report which provided an update on the findings and outcome of the Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Social Care Services and set out the approach to address findings of the inspection and further develop services and outcomes for children who were in the care of the local authority.

The Cabinet Member thanked the Children Services Team for their hard work and achievements. She was proud of the service for the change in working culture, which had been fully recognised in the inspection findings. She commented on the valuable self-evaluation, which the service had undertaken in December 2022, which helped inform the inspection.

The Cabinet further commended the Children’s service for achieving this significant milestone and thanked wider Council staff and partners for their support in this transformation. Special mention was made of the continuing support to care leavers and the Ofsted finding that the Council was making considerable progress to make a positive difference to children’s lives.

In response to questions from Councillors: das Neves, Hakata, Gordon and Cawley Harrison, the following was noted:

-       Pleased that the Council’s work with children in care, had been recognised.

-       That the inspection had found no children were at risk or unsafe.

-       The service would need to provide a post inspection action plan by the 18^th of July and this would set out the priority actions to be taken forward and would have granular detail on how these would be taken forward.

-       The action plan would include actions related to permanency plans, private fostering arrangements, life story work and supervision across the service and improving the understanding and knowledge of frontline workers around adoption. The current draft action plan was being consulted on with key children’s partners and would be considered and commented on by the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel on the 26^th of June.

-       The Children’s service was exploring establishing a separate Children's commissioning and contracts team to help develop conversations with the marketplace around stability of placements, the recruitment of in house foster carers and enable better negotiations with the independent fostering agencies.

-       The independent chair of the Excellence for Children’s meetings was in the process of being confirmed at the present time. However, the individual likely to take the role was considerably experienced in the children’s services area.

-       The Council was part of a cohort of London Councils working with the LGA considering the  the inclusion of care leavers as a protected characteristic under the equality act.

RESOLVED to

1.            Note the findings and outcome of the Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Social Care Services, a copy of which is attached as Appendix 1; and

2.            Note the approach set out in paragraph 4.5 of the report to address the findings of the inspection and further develop services and outcomes for children who are in care to the local authority.

Reasons for decision

Children’s services were subject to a full Ofsted inspection called the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) by a team of Ofsted inspectors over a three-week period. During the first week of the inspection, inspectors were off site and were provided with data and information in line with guidance in the ILACS framework. Inspectors were based in Haringey for the last two weeks of the inspection from 13 February to 24 February 2023.

The inspection framework is focused on gathering evidence on the improving outcomes for children and young people, and evidence of the impact of leaders. There is a strong emphasis on examining frontline practice, speaking directly to practitioners and taking into account the views of children, young people, and their parents and carers.

In advance of the inspection, the service produced a self-evaluation that set out strengths, areas for improvement and actions needed to improve practice and outcomes for children and young people. Ofsted received a copy of the self-evaluation in advance of the inspection and used this alongside a set of required data and information to form their key lines of enquiry. As part of the inspection process, inspectors look for evidence of progress from previous inspections. A Joint Targeted Area Inspection (JTAI) on neglect took place in December 2017. The last full inspection of children’s services took place in 2018.

The judgement from the 2023 inspection is that the overall effectiveness of Children’s Service is ‘Good’.

The Ofsted inspection found that “In 2018, inspectors judged Haringey children’s services to require improvement to be good. Since then, an ambitious and stable leadership team has made considerable progress and much of the service is now transformed. The senior leadership team has achieved steady improvement in the quality and impact of social work practice for children in need of help and protection and sustained good support for care leavers. Services in these areas are now good, with some examples of excellent child and family-centred practice” (Inspection of Haringey local authority children’s services report, page 9).

Ofsted acknowledged that most children are now well supported and “that leaders know there is more to do to achieve the same level of progress in developing services for children in care’. Under a heading, ‘what needs to improve”, inspectors noted the following areas:

·                The effectiveness of permanence planning for children in care, including the challenge brought by independent reviewing officers.

·                The identification of and response to children in private fostering arrangements.

·                The provision and quality of life story work at key developmental stages in children’s lives.

·                The quality of supervision in ensuring that plans for children make a positive impact.

·                The understanding and knowledge of frontline workers about adoption.

            A Post Ofsted Action Plan, that responds to the areas for improvement, will be presented to the Children’s and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel on 26 June 2023. The Director of Children’s Services (DCS) and the Cabinet Member for Children, Schools, and Families, will submit the action plan to Ofsted on 18 July 2023. The delivery of the action plan will be overseen the AD for Safeguarding & Social Care who will provide progress reports to the Corporate Parenting Advisory Committee, Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel, and the Haringey Safeguarding Children Partnership.

            As part of our post Ofsted work towards excellent social work practice we will establish independently chaired, ‘Excellence for Children’ meetings’. These meetings, that will include the Leader, Lead Member, Chief Executive, DCS, and others, will support the service as it continues the journey towards an overall Ofsted judgement of Outstanding.

Alternative Options

None. After the inspection, the local authority should write an action plan that responds to the findings in the report. It must submit its action plan to Ofsted within 70 working days of receiving the final inspection report. The requirement for this is set out in the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (Inspection of Local Authorities) Regulations 2007.