Bath & North East Somerset: Local Spotlight

Since 2018, Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES) has been smart in its use of national funding schemes to improve services for disadvantaged children and families. The beneficial impact of this can be seen in its recently published Ofsted report which highlighted the improvements made in children’s services since the last inspection three years before.

Children’s services in B&NES has been in a good place for some time: it was rated “good” in a single inspection framework report in 2017 and a focused visit in 2019 was also largely positive about services for care leavers. Between these, there was a positive inspection of special educational needs and disability services, one of few areas to be praised for this.

The latest inspection report awards the department a good overall rating with the same grade for leadership, services for children in need, and for care leavers and those in care. A number of the areas praised in the 10-page report have been prioritised for funding and service development over recent years.

Significant improvements

Inspectors highlighted the “significant improvements” made to the “front door” of children’s services, which it said had provided clarity for agencies referring to the department and improved services for children. In 2018, B&NES was one of six authorities to work with What Works for Children’s Social Care to improve front door services and reduce the need for care proceedings.

“Targeted services in early help provide clear pathways for support and are more fully integrated into early decisions,” states the report. “Thresholds for decisions about risk and need are well understood and appropriately applied. When risks change, decisions to increase or decrease statutory child protection services are taken with reflection on the best way to both engage the family and sustain change in the longer term.”

A year later, B&NES was one of 39 authorities to receive a share of £15m to develop more intensive support for families at immediate risk of care proceedings. Family support teams are praised in the report for “knowing families well” and for maintaining a high quality of service for children and families despite rising demand and an increase in caseloads.

“The intensive support services ‘Always Precious’, ‘Southside’ and other community services positively support families to understand and modify their thinking and actions in the best interests of children,” states the report.

B&NES was also part of the Lighthouse Parenting Programme, alongside Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which received funding in 2020 to improve outcomes for families with children on a child protection plan or involved in pre-proceedings. Inspectors were impressed that for over half the children for whom pre-proceedings processes were instigated, this strengthened level of intervention is proving successful. “It is promoting sustainable change that is enabling children to stay safely with their families and preventing them from having to enter care,” the report states.

The word “stability” features heavily in Ofsted’s report, never more so than describing the social worker workforce, which is reflected in the low turnover rates and use of agency staff. It describes B&NES as an “employer of choice” for social workers thanks to good supervision “flexible working arrangements, largely manageable caseloads and clear career opportunities”. Leaders and managers are also praised for being visible, effective and setting high ambitions for children.

Since September 2020, the department has been led by Mary Kearney-Knowles, who took over from Mike Bowden, after he stepped down as corporate director of people and communities after four years. For the next phase in the department’s development, Kearney-Knowles, who joined the council in 2019, plans to improve support for care leavers from transition to independence through to 25, which, she says, will require further investment alongside practice changes. (see DCS view).

DCS VIEW: EXTERNAL CHALLENGE AND COMMITTED WORKFORCE DRIVE IMPROVEMENTS

By Mary Kearney-Knowles, director of children’s services and education, B&NES

In 2017, we received a “good” overall judgment. Since then, we have continuously worked to strengthen services for care experienced young people in B&NES. Care leavers have been key areas for improvement in both our directorate plan and service improvement board.

At the operation level we focused on our direct work with young people, including the quality and timeliness of pathway planning and co-production of plans. We have also developed our risk management approach, a particular area of strength in B&NES. Managers use data to drive performance with improved systems of collation and analysis. To ensure our improvement plans were on the right track, we received oversight from Mark Riddell, national implementation adviser for care leavers, and a further focused visit by Ofsted in 2020. These visits proved invaluable to supporting our improvement journey.

In 2019/20, we undertook a significant redesign of our front door services to align with our emerging Systemic Practice Model and moved forwards with this despite the Covid-19 pandemic. This was based on feedback from families and children, including thoughts about how they valued relationships and a consistency of worker. We have embedded models of group supervision, systemic discussions within our family support teams and our triage team are putting strong relationships with partner agencies, in particular individual relationships with schools, at the heart of good decision making and multi-agency working.

By developing this culture, we are aspiring to put collaborative working at every stage of our engagement with families, promoting core ideas around holding and respecting differing perspectives with curiosity and interest.

There were also some changes in leadership in B&NES during the pandemic that were managed well. After eight months as interim director of children’s services I was appointed as director of children’s services and education on a permanent basis in April 2021. We also created an interim assistant director of children and young people services in December 2020: the post holder was appointed on a substantive basis in December 2021. This post and post-holder have been integral to the relentless focus on social work practice and service improvement.

We have an ambitious transformation programme which will drive forward practice and further developments. We have already started to review service provision in our care leavers service in line with the recommendations within the March 2022 Ofsted inspection and new statutory duties as from April 2022. This will require investment alongside practice changes and this area of work will be progressed through our service improvement board.

One of our main challenges is to retain and support our committed, passionate and experienced workforce. We need to maintain a relentless focus on practice development, manageable caseloads and appointment to vacant posts.

We believe that the way we value, hold and approach relationships between senior managers and frontline managers will direct how frontline managers relate to their staff, which will in turn influence and model how staff engage and support families.