This week marks the first anniversary of the start of the latest round of Ofsted inspections of children's services departments.
Inspectors rolled into Rochdale Council on 29 January 2018 to carry out the first proper inspection of local authority children's services (Ilacs). The report, published in mid-March, showed Rochdale had made steady progress since it was last inspected in October 2014, but not enough to boost the rating it received then of "requires improvement".
Fast forward a year to the most recent inspection judgment to be published, that of Birmingham City Council. The largest children's services department in England had been rated "inadequate" for the past decade, resulting in responsibility for children's services being transferred to an independent trust in 2017.
The latest report, published on 17 January 2019, showed that the changes had paid off - inspectors found a "revitalisation" of social work practice and culture that had helped achieve a "requires improvement" rating.
The Rochdale and Birmingham judgments are instructive of the wider trend in performance among the 34 councils to be inspected in the first year of the Ilacs.
Improved ratings
Of the 34 inspected, 56 per cent have improved their rating compared to the last children's services inspection and 35 per cent have maintained it. Just three councils - Blackpool, Bradford and Wakefield - have been downgraded over the past year.
Before the Ilacs was introduced, former Ofsted social care chief inspector Eleanor Schooling said the new regime would be less onerous and more responsive to the demand and funding pressures councils faced. The outcomes of the first 34 Ilacs inspections suggests this has been borne out.
In the first year, 62 per cent of councils have been rated "good" or better for overall effectiveness. As a comparison, in the first year of the previous system, the single inspection framework (SIF), just 25 per cent of the 39 councils inspected were rated good.
While it took until March 2016 for a council to receive an overall "outstanding" judgment under the SIF, in the first year of the Ilacs, five councils have achieved the top rating - Bexley, East Sussex, Essex, Leeds and North Yorkshire.
Yvette Stanley, who replaced Schooling as Ofsted national director of social care, says the improvement is partly down to leaders getting the right practice and management systems in place.
"Local authorities have focused on getting the basics right," she says. "This includes having a clear, child-focused vision across the whole council, a high-challenge, high-support culture for staff, manageable caseloads and visible leaders.
"The past few years have also seen a huge increase in embedding evidence-based practice in work with children. When well planned and carefully implemented, we see more focused assessments and interventions with families."
Stanley says the Ilacs design - "it isn't just an inspection, it's a system of activities" - alongside more regular contact with councils, has helped leaders "identify, understand and respond to issues sooner".
Further analysis of ratings for service areas covering help and protection; children in care and care leavers; and leadership also paint a picture of rising standards.
More than two-thirds of children's services were rated good or better for children in care and leadership - in fact, inspectors deemed the quality of leadership as outstanding at one in four councils. Only in help and protection were the majority of councils judged to be struggling - 56 per cent were rated requires improvement or inadequate for this category.
Improving standards
The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) highlights the role that peer challenge and support is playing in improving standards.
Steve Crocker, chair of the ADCS standards, performance and inspection committee, says: "The new framework is a welcome move away from a ‘one-size-fits-all' model and complements the development of our Regional Improvement Alliances. Generally, it has been well received by our members and is seen as an improvement on the previous framework because it focuses more on social workers' practice."
However, Crocker reiterated the association's concerns over the use of single-word judgments.
"It's easy to take a poor inspection judgement at face value, but the services we lead are complex and there is no certainty that two local authorities with the same single-word judgment are providing exactly the same quality of service nor achieving the same outcomes for children in their respective areas," he adds.
"We are operating in challenging times, years of austerity, and rising demand for our help and support among children and families has necessitated an ever-greater focus on statutory child protection services.
"To achieve this, local authorities have prioritised investment in these life-saving services because this is the right thing to do, but there is not enough money in the system nationally."
