Local Spotlight: Bolton Council

The borough of Bolton was created in 1974 through the Local Government Act 1972 and brought together seven districts in Greater Manchester into a single entity.

It is a diverse city – one in five of its 295,000 citizens identify as being Muslim - and has a rich heritage through the coal and cotton industries and its rail and canal systems. In the latter part of the the 20th century its population declined as heavy industry dwindled, but the last 20 years have seen a resurgence linked to economic regeneration and there are ambitious plans to be a “smart city” by 2030.

Significant challenges

In terms of socio-economic factors, Bolton has significant challenges ranking 14th out of 151 local authority areas for rates of child poverty in the End Child Poverty Coalition data (see graphics). In other wellbeing measures, Bolton performs better than neighbouring authorities for year 6 child obesity rates and for the proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neet).

Bolton tracks above the England average for looked-after children per 10,000 but below the mean rate for neighbouring authorities and the amount spent on children’s services per head of population is significantly less than the average in the region. After a period of budget cuts, the department faces losing a further £1m in 2024/25 as the council looks to address an overspend.

Despite the financial challenges, the department has achieved significant sustained success with it being rated “good” overall by Ofsted inspectors in October 2023 and in 2018 prior to that. “This progress has been made against a backdrop of increasing need, significant financial pressures and an unprecedented national pandemic,” the report states.

Inspectors judged services for children in care, for care leavers and the impact of leaders to be good. The report praised the progress made in strengthening areas highlighted for improvement in 2018, including the impact of early help, the response to domestic abuse, permanence planning and transitions for disabled children.

Safeguarding was rated “requires improvement” due to inconsistent child protection practice. Capacity issues have affected some of the safeguarding teams, leading to the quality and impact of assessments, plans and management oversight not being consistently good, the report states.

Bolton director of children’s services (DCS) Bernie Brown is a “passionate and committed leader, who advocates strongly for children”, say inspectors, adding that she has provided “strong leadership throughout a period of change, with an unrelenting focus on service delivery”.

Brown, who has been in post for seven years, says forging strong relationships with partner organisations so they play a greater role in supporting children and families has been key to achieving good outcomes in the face of adversity (see DCS view).

Despite the challenges in safeguarding practice, inspectors highlighted how children’s services leaders in Bolton were taking action to tackle these. A new assistant director has been appointed to lead this work which will aim to support children earlier, Brown adds.

Recruitment and retention of social workers is a challenge in Bolton, as it is nationally, but Brown is not keen on recruiting practitioners from overseas nor hiring agency social work teams. However, she used the latter to tackle a backlog of cases last year.

“We don’t now have any social workers with caseloads over 30 so it did what we wanted it to do,” she says. “We now must work on recruiting more permanent staff and then retaining those staff. What we’ve got to acknowledge though is that people are going to work for agencies – they are not going to go away in totality – but we need to be able to manage it better.”

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DCS VIEW: BOLTON COUNCIL HARNESSES THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PARTNER AGENCIES

Bernie Brown, director of children’s services, Bolton Council (pictured)

Our success is down to our incredible staff across the system. As DCS, it’s about asking the right questions, remaining close to practice, being visible and interested in what works for children. But it’s also about ensuring the wider community is part of the solution.

The impact of Covid was significant on families and communities with many lives lost and we delivered £8m of cuts to children’s services while improving services and retaining our “good” rating.

It’s important that we talk about the whole children’s system in Bolton because often we focus on just social care. We have put a lot of time into our relationships with schools, health, and other partners to put all children’s needs on everybody’s agenda. In Bolton, we don’t work in a silo, we work together to improve the lives of children and their families.

We have very committed staff, particularly at middle management level, who have put a lot of extra work in behind the scenes to create this collaborative system. We reconstituted our multi-agency Children and Young People’s Partnership Board, and co-produced a plan about children and young people in Bolton. It was truly co-produced and that was tough, but you can’t have co-production if you throw out the bits you don’t like. We have more work to do, but we have created a very engaged partnership board and a clear set of priorities that focus on improving outcomes and preventing the need for statutory intervention.

We brought the partnership together to pin down the change we wanted to see, and how to deliver it. It was a way to engage with partners to say: “Okay, you come to these meetings once a quarter, but there’s an awful lot of work that we need to do in between the meetings.” The meetings are not about children’s services or social care but about the whole system, where we each have responsibility and accountability for improving the lives and ambitions of Bolton children, and their families.

I am clear about my statutory duties as a DCS but that doesn’t mean everybody else can abdicate responsibility and sit on the sidelines. Everyone accepts that true place-based regeneration starts with people, and if children are not safe then everything else is compromised.

A successful system means bringing everybody together, including children and communities with lived experience, and asking how we work in the most effective way. Our focus cannot just be on the children most at risk, but also on doing work in the early years to reduce demand and improve outcomes in the future. We’re now in a much more mature place to have some of those difficult conversations.

One of the things the Ofsted inspectors saw in Bolton is that the partner agencies do genuinely have relationships with each other. We don’t always agree, but absolutely all of us put improving outcomes for children at the heart of everything we do.