Agenda item

This report considers the Ofsted inspection of the Local Authorities Children’s Services framework (ILACS) between 29^th October 2018 and 9^th November 2018.

The Committee considered the report on Ofsted’s inspection of Haringey Children’s Services. Officers noted that, whilst the services required improvement to be good, the tone of the inspection report was positive and suggested the services were on the right trajectory and had improved on the previous year.

Regarding the inspection process, the Committee was informed that, following a brief presentation to the Ofsted inspectors on the 29^th November, the inspectors then observed and questioned members of staff at random in the MASH. At the end of the day, there would be a meeting with the inspectors for Officers to receive feedback. There were instances where Officers did not agree with the inspectors conclusions and this was fed back to Ofsted but there were also occasions where the Officers agreed with the conclusions. Overall, Officers accepted the areas Ofsted had identified for improvement in their inspection report. The children’s services had carried out its own self-evaluation and found that it largely concurred with the Ofsted judgements and the services recognised there was a variability in certain areas but it was working hard for these to be eliminated.

Ann Graham, Director of Children’s Services, noted the difficult work of social workers and highlighted the praise Ofsted made in relation to the work of the Council’s staff and managers - that they were tenacious in their efforts to help and support children and young people.

Following discussion, the Committee:

·         Concurred with Ofsted’s praise of staff and managers. The Committee thanked the Officers for their work in helping to improve the lives of Haringey’s children and young people.

·         Recognised the areas of improvement needed but noted the progress made by the services in recent years and felt they was moving in the right direction.

·         Queried the Ofsted comment on page 21 of the report pack that health and other relevant agencies were not always in attendance at strategy discussions following the risk in a case having been escalated. It was noted this was due to the lack of CCG funding to enable consistent health agency representation on the MASH. 

·         Sought clarity on the comment that the engagement of fathers was too variable. Officers noted there were occasions where only the mother had been consulted and better engagement with fathers, where possible, was needed.

·         Queried how confident Officers were that the children’s services would be classed as ‘good’ at its next major Ofsted inspection. Officers responded they were optimistic and that strategies had already been put in place to meet the deficiencies identified in the Ofsted inspection report.

·         Noted an Action Plan was being submitted to Ofsted in March 2019 and that would then be taken to Cabinet for it to note. Regarding that Action Plan, Officers were asked how they would monitor the actions to ensure they were being completed and how the committee could be reassured that progress had been made on those actions. Officers responded that a report would be presented to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and, from then onwards, regular updates would be provided to that committee for monitoring. A draft Action Plan had been created with nine overall key actions and then additional actions supporting those for individual teams to meet in order to support the overall delivery of the Action Plan. It was noted children and young people could provide valuable audit insight into the services to ensure that their voices were heard and that the services worked for them as much as it did the Council.

An update on the Action Plan for Ofsted was requested to be reported to CPAC (Action: Ann Graham)