Issue - meetings

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  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9