It has been a turbulent few years for children’s services in Bradford. The department, which as recently as 2017 had received a positive joint targeted area inspection, has been hit hard by an exodus of experienced social workers, a surge in child protection work and disruption caused by an overhaul of senior management. The problems resulted in Bradford children’s services being rated “inadequate” in September 2018 and despite the arrival in 2019 of a new director of children’s services (DCS), the most recent Ofsted monitoring report published in March 2020 found progress in some key areas was too slow.
Diverse population
Bradford has the sixth largest population of any English local authority and has the highest percentage of under-16s in England. It has an ethnically diverse population, with 20 per cent of the area’s citizens of Pakistani ethnic origin, the largest proportion in the country.
The city has high rates of poverty and ill health, and is above national averages for child poverty and childhood obesity (see graphics). Bradford has been very badly affected by Covid-19, with hospitals in the city recording more than 530 deaths linked to the virus by the end of November 2020.
Against this backdrop, Bradford City Council has approved a four-year plan for recovering from the pandemic and tackling key issues in the city including improving health and employment outcomes. Among the plan’s targets are improving life chances and educational opportunities for young people – Bradford is below the regional and national averages for Attainment 8 scores – and making safeguarding for children a council-wide endeavour. Early help will be a principle underpinning all of its work, according to the plan, and the council is improving midwifery services as part of the 10-year Better Start programme.
Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said: “Bradford district is a big, bold place right in the heart of the North. We owe it to our residents to live up to our potential. This is a plan to deliver on our ambitions for the district and for all residents and businesses. It reflects our commitment to invest in our children, in jobs and skills, in tackling inequality and build a better, more inclusive and sustainable future in which everyone can achieve their potential.
“We are a young, innovative district with a diverse and vibrant culture and our bid to become the UK City of Culture in 2025 will celebrate this. Harnessing our strengths will be key to re-building our economy and supporting our communities in the face of these challenges ahead.”
The extent of the impact of the pandemic on children’s services is still hard to gauge, but DCS Mark Douglas says it is likely to see a further rise in deprivation among families (see DCS view).
However, Douglas is confident there will be sufficient resources to cope thanks to the council providing more money on top of the additional investment in agency and permanent workers over the past two years. The recruitment drive was much needed as in the year up to September 2019, the department lost 64 full-time equivalent members of staff, many to neighbouring authorities that offered better employment terms.
In 2018/19, the number of children entering care also rose by a third from 338 to 472; overall, Bradford’s looked-after children rate has risen from 63 to 82 per 10,000 children between 2015 and 2019. The rate currently stands at 87, indicating the need for more focus on intervening earlier.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that recent developments such as the introduction of a new practice model, a localised team structure and better systems to track children’s cases will help improve outcomes for children already in the system.
DCS VIEW
‘COUNCIL INVESTMENT HAS HELPED US IMPROVE STAFF PAY AND CONDITIONS’
By Mark Douglas, director of children’s services, Bradford City Council
I came in about 12 months after the difficult Ofsted judgment. My background is having worked in authorities that needed improving and prior to this at Doncaster children’s services trust.
My priority in the first few months was to review the improvement plan that was already in place to strengthen and develop this further.
The council has been very responsive to my needs and committed £17m in additional recurring funding to invest in children’s services. It sees improvement in the service as the responsibility of the whole council and that every part has a contribution to make.
The additional investment has enabled me to bring in additional capacity. We’ve been successful in recruiting approved social workers and managers at team and service manager level, but like many areas we’ve struggled to attract practitioners with more than two years’ experience.
The council invested in bringing in more agency staff; some have been here more than two years and are committed to our improvement journey, but we’d like to reduce the numbers and be less reliant on them.
We’ve worked hard to create the right conditions for a stable workforce: reduced caseloads, more supervision and improved terms and conditions so that remuneration is now comparable or better than neighbouring authorities.
Bradford is a diverse city and it is important that our workforce reflects that. In parts of the city people from Pakistani heritage make up a third of the population. The children’s social care workforce has a lot of younger practitioners quite a few of whom are from the Pakistani and South Asian community. The department is fairly representative of that, but that’s not to say there aren’t challenges around this.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Ofsted monitoring visits have been suspended, but we have recently completed a three-week “assurance visit” so that inspectors can check our arrangements remain robust. They are not inspections, but inspectors do a case file audit and speak to our partners remotely. Staff were looking forward to it: they wanted to show the inspectors how they had kept children safe during the pandemic.
The past nine months have been very challenging and I’m proud and appreciative of the extra lengths that staff have gone to do that. During this time, the majority of the improvement plan work has continued even though most of the staff were working from home. Even with the communications and technology in place, not being able to bring staff together physically has been a challenge.
Covid has also resulted in the number of children in care continuing to rise, with young people not being able to leave care to move into independence during lockdown. I’d expect that to ease over the coming six months.
Our improvement strategy has a big focus on improving support for children and families to prevent the need for care, but when children do come into care we want to create the conditions for permanence so that they can thrive.
There is no doubt the impact of Covid will be seen for some years to come but the council has committed to providing children’s services an extra £7.1m in 2021/22 to aid recovery from the pandemic and ensure we have sufficient capacity in the system.
