Wilshaw slams 'unacceptable' children's social care services

Appearing before the Education Select Committee, Sir Michael Wilshaw said he would describe children’s social care performance across the country as a grade three – “requires improvement” – in the Ofsted ratings system.

He said: “Unless particular issues are sorted I would say it is going to remain on grade three.

“It is coasting at an unacceptable level and unless leadership improves, unless turnover decreases in terms of leadership of directors of children’s services, unless safeguarding boards’ roles and responsibilities are defined, and the issues of recruitment of social workers are addressed, the situation will continue as it is.”

Wilshaw was appearing before the committee to answer questions about last year's social care annual report.

He said there was a collective responsibility across services and the public in spreading the idea that persistent poor parenting is unacceptable.

“I think the message needs to go out – not just to families – about the importance of raising children properly and giving them clear boundaries,” Wilshaw told MPs.

“That message has also got to go out to children’s services and particularly social workers on the ground about how they interact with those families.

“What they have got to do is, in many ways, what the troubled families initiative is doing; sending out some tough messages to families that are not looking after their children properly – ‘By the time I return next week I want to see this and if not I will take action’.

“These families need to know that they can’t go on treating their children like this.

“They can’t go on behaving in this manner and that they have got to hit the targets that they are being set by social workers.

“Where we see good practice we see social workers supported by experienced people going into these families and giving out those tough messages.”

Wilshaw went on to say that members of the public should be prepared to play a part in identifying poor parenting and suggested that the government consider offering them financial incentives to help troubled families in their area.

“In my experience, in the most difficult communities there are always going to be good people who want to help,” he said.

“How do you incentivise those citizens?

“How do you financially incentivise those people to get up in the morning, knock on the neighbour's door and say ‘your children are not up yet, they have not had their breakfast. Why are you not taking them to school?’”

Appearing alongside Wilshaw, Debbie Jones, Ofsted’s director of social care, said the organisation is working to strengthen the way in which it helps authorities to improve.

“We have done a significant amount of work in conjunction with the sector about development of improvement,” she said.

“We will be appointing a director of improvement in the next couple of weeks.”

Asked about standards within Ofsted itself, Wilshaw said the organisation was “good, with some outstanding features”, pointing to the fact that it has increased the number of senior inspectors by nearly 50 per cent, introduced regional teams, and is working to improve the standard of inspections.

However he did say that around one in three regulatory inspectors had been identified as "not good enough".

“We are doing something about that,” he said.

“We have created a model of managing inspectors and the regulatory workforce to ensure there is training and performance management is robustly done and that they do a good job in the institutions they are inspecting, particularly children’s services.

“It is a work in progress.”