Architect of inspection: Jacky Tiotto, director of children's services, Bexley

Sitting in the ultra-modern offices that are home to the children's services department at the London Borough of Bexley, Jacky Tiotto says it feels "good and honest" to be back working in service delivery after a decade spent in the civil service and Ofsted.

The response suggests Tiotto, who joined Bexley Council as director of children's services (DCS) in February, is relieved to be out of Ofsted after a four-year stint as the inspectorate's deputy director for social care. Not so, says Tiotto, who prior to that held senior positions at the Department for Education and Skills and Government Office.

"I love inspection," she says, "but you have to be able to rely on current experience of direct practice and mine was coming to an end.

"You have to be honest with yourself, when you've done so long in the 'centre' you can't see the reality any more and I felt like that."

Although being away from the frontline for some time, Tiotto's recent roles have focused on social work practice, initially as the lead adviser to Professor Eileen Munro's review of child protection, and then developing Ofsted's single inspection framework (SIF) for children's services. The latter has proved controversial, as its introduction in late 2013 has seen most children's services departments - including Bexley - given critical judgments by the inspectorate. So as the architect of the SIF, has she been welcomed back by her DCS peers?

"People have been very generous and I haven't had much ribbing," she says. "Although I think there is some quiet interest in whether I'll be able to turn Bexley around."

Tiotto, who has developed a five-year improvement plan for Bexley, hopes to "do this job for a decade", but recognises that DCS job security is an oxymoron. With three-quarters of councils assessed under the SIF being judged as "inadequate" or "requires improvement", the current inspection regime has only served to ratchet up the pressure on children's services leaders, with some DCSs losing their jobs after a negative judgment. Tiotto defends the SIF as a framework "very focused on social work practice" and, instead, says the problem lies in how judgments are being interpreted.

"Describe a place as inadequate if you need to," she says. "But it is what is happening as a response to that which is causing the damage.

"I regret the fact we're in that polarised debate and that inspection is being used as a lever."

She adds that debate about the fairness of the inspection system is "over-inflated as a problem" and is taking energy away from tackling difficult policy issues such as how to help children who live in violent families.

Misinterpreted narrative

She also says that the narrative around the inspection framework has been misinterpreted from the outset, particularly in how the requires improvement judgment is perceived. She says it was meant to prevent complacency setting in and highlight where improvement was needed. To illustrate this, she uses the analogy of how parents can sometimes rest on their laurels if their child's schoolwork is marked as being adequate.

"If it comes back saying they require improvement on multiplication, you are almost mandated to do something about that," she says.

"That was the intention - adequacy was creating the wrong response locally."

She says that the requires improvement judgment was never meant to be interpreted as "close to inadequate", but admits the wording change from adequate "created a wave of anxiety in the system".

Tiotto also admits the way Ofsted explained the changes to the inspection system meant "only good is good enough" should have been handled better. "In retrospect, what was unintended about that statement is the conflation of aspiration and ambition for vulnerable children hit with the blame world. That's unfortunate, but I don't think when those words were uttered anyone understood that conflation would happen and what would then reverberate around the system is that less than good is to fail.

"Ofsted, including me at the time, needed to say that good is what we should aspire to. But a service requiring improvement to be good is not failing. Requires improvement is over the line - full stop."

The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) has long criticised the SIF for being too onerous, and its president Alison O'Sullivan recently called it a "dysfunctional process" that should be halted. Meanwhile, Ofsted is looking at developing a lighter touch inspection system to replace the SIF once all 152 councils have been assessed under it.

Tiotto says she does not take the criticism personally - "I might be completely naive, but no one has sent me hate mail yet" - and does not think much needs to be changed about the SIF.

"I don't think it needs much tweaking in the test made of good practice," she says.

"I think inspection is a force for good. I said for a long time that if the sector welcomed the core message from Professor Munro's review that we had forgotten how to be effective as social workers - and we hadn't asked that question for a long time - you can't start inspecting that practice and expect it to all be great."

None of the 70 children's services department inspected so far under the SIF have received the highest rating of "outstanding". Tiotto admits to being "a bit ambivalent" about the outstanding rating as the current definition - sustained good practice delivering outstanding outcomes - does not necessarily reflect outstanding social work practice. But she accepts that if no authorities are judged worthy of being in the top category, "you do some damage".

"I take the point that if you're going to go on about the number that are not yet good, you create an odd debate if you don't have any that are outstanding," she adds.

Rather than the focus being on changing the process, Tiotto believes more attention should be directed at what services are inspected. Instead of broadening out into the multi-agency arena, inspection of children's social care should focus on core statutory services, she believes.

"What is on the statute books - children in care, child protection and supporting families (at risk) so you don't have to do that - would be a good package to focus on because there is still weaknesses in those services," she explains.

How inspection balances the need to have an in-depth look at practice alongside taking a broad overview of all children's social care services was a debate Tiotto was having at Ofsted and an issue she thinks "needs revisiting".

Taking a focused look at multi-agency work in parts of the children's social care system, as Ofsted will trial next year when it assesses child sexual exploitation (CSE) work in a handful of authorities, is fine, she says, but could also be problematic because so many agencies are unclear about what their responsibilities are.

"I understand why inspection feels it needs to increase its breadth in parallel with the policy space increasing," says Tiotto. "But it's a hiding to nothing - we cannot help everybody, so where are we going to prioritise?"

The increased demands on children's social care combined with a tougher funding climate mean that an urgent policy debate is needed about what is a realistic social work response, says Tiotto.

"It is laudable we want to think about children's lives and outcomes, but we're at a point where the legislation and economic infrastructure is distracting.

"We're not having good enough debates about where the state intervenes with families that struggle, but also what belongs to community."

Newer risks

She points out that the Children Act 1989 was designed to address risk to children in domestic settings, and does not necessarily reflect the nature of some of the newer risks posed to children today.

"Since 1989, we've had concerns about residential settings; now it's the internet, radicalisation and CSE. You can describe risk in all those scenarios, but you can't possibly address all of those with the architecture we've got."

Tiotto says the range of issues children's social care is expected to deal with has confused practitioners and when combined with the growth in the "blame" culture around children's social work, it has led to defensive practice from the front line up to directors.

"I'm shocked how full of blame the system is now," says Tiotto. "When I left, there wasn't this straightjacket of fear there is now."

She describes government moves to on the one hand support social work recruitment while on the other introduce the willful neglect laws that could see professionals prosecuted and imprisoned as a "ridiculous parallel".

"We've got the narrative completely wrong," she says. "This work is complex. It is difficult at the best of times and you're going to get it wrong just like meteorologists get things wrong. Mandatory reporting and seeing headlines about social workers going to prison is frankly madness in a profession you can't recruit to.

"Practitioners won't come in, and when they do, their work is less than effective because defensive practice turns thinking off. That is not good in social work because you need space to analyse complicated information to make the best possible decision for that child."

JACKY TIOTTO CV

• Feb 2015 Director of children's services, Bexley Council
• Sept 2011 Deputy director for social care, Ofsted
• Dec 2009 Professional adviser to the Munro Review
• 2008 Head of safeguarding unit, the Department for Education and Skills
• 2006 Regional director, children and learners, Government Office