Since the 17th century, Stoke-on-Trent has been renowned the world over for its ceramics and pottery industry. This industrial boom served the city well until the latter part of the 20th century – in the 1980s and 90s many of the major ceramics factories closed and unemployment rose sharply. The economic decline resulted in a population fall, but since the mid-2000s a rise in migration of people from eastern European countries has seen it rebound to now stand at 256,000.
Demographic changes
The city is also getting younger as a result of consistently having one of the highest birth rates in England and Wales over the past 15 years. There is now a fifth more children aged five to nine than a decade ago. If things stay the same, the city’s population will keep getting gradually larger, and could increase by 16,080 people, to 269,739, by 2041. Around 20 per cent of residents are aged under 16.
The demographic changes this century has seen the proportion of the population that are non-white British grow from six per cent to one in five. People from Asian backgrounds also make up a significant proportion of the local population, particularly children. More than a third of all residents described as either Bangladeshi or Pakistani were 16 or younger, while one in seven were under the age of five.
Despite the population growing, deprivation levels in Stoke-on-Trent remain high – 23 per cent of working-age adults receive benefits, while a quarter of primary-age and a fifth of secondary-age children receive free school meals, both significantly above the England average.
High poverty rates have resulted in below-average outcomes for educational attainment at all age groups, health and wellbeing measures, and rates of child development (see graphics). Overall, Stoke-on-Trent is ranked 141st out of 151 areas in England for the percentage of reception children achieving the “good level of development” measure.
It is against this backdrop that the council’s children’s services department was rated “inadequate” by Ofsted in March 2019. The inspectorate found a shortage of foster care places and that vulnerable children were being placed in “unsafe” unregulated settings. Management oversight was also inadequate with leaders failing to grasp the severity of the problems.
Improvement plan
In response the council put together an improvement plan and were appointed an independent commissioner who concluded the department needed external support to improve – last March, Leeds City Council was appointed as an improvement partner, just after an Ofsted follow up inspection was published that found practice was still poor across a range of services.
Sarah Parker was appointed director of children and families services in January 2020. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, she has spent the past year establishing the foundations for improvement – a five-year children’s strategy, Room to Grow, has been put in place with ambitious targets to develop a restorative practice model and family group conferencing – both features of the Leeds approach – to reduce the numbers of children in care, and shift provision from residential care to fostering. Parker, formerly DCS at Dorset Council, also launched a campaign to recruit 40 more children’s social workers (see DCS view).
Parker will now be hoping the successful Leeds approach can be reproduced in the “Potteries”.
DCS VIEW
‘COLLABORATIVE APPROACH INSTILS CHILDREN’S SERVICES VISION INTO CITY DNA’
By Sarah Parker, director of children and families services, Stoke-on-Trent City Council
What struck me when I arrived is how tremendously proud people are of the area. That sense of pride is something we want to work with because improving services for children and young people is a city-wide endeavour; we can’t do it on our own. Room to Grow is a partnership document and organisations like Stoke City Football Club have incorporated it into their DNA. People were cheesed off with children’s services, they felt we had let them down, but we have a new leadership team, are committed to making the improvements we need to make, and people are willing to give us a chance.
I adopt a collaborative leadership approach and use that with parents, staff and external organisations and you can see that in our early years and school readiness partnerships. Council leaders have also shown their backing by increasing the budget since 2019/20 – I provisionally have an extra £5m in the budget for 2021/22, but there are huge pressures in the care budget due to the impact of the pandemic. They have also provided direct support for a number of new initiatives that are driving improvement.
The Ofsted report is hard reading, but we have made major inroads in addressing key issues. In February, we launch our new front door, designed on the Professor Thorpe model which I have used in other authorities. It’s about making strong relationships so that partners have the confidence to come to us with concerns.
We want to deliver good-quality social work practice – we have got some great social workers who have been through one hell of a journey, which is why we have focused on giving them the tools to do the job well. Leeds City Council has been awesome in providing virtual staff training in Restorative Practice. We’ve also reviewed what good social work looks like and introduced an evaluation cycle that measures practice improvement against the Ofsted framework.
We have recruited a new leadership team, most of whom are permanent. They have brought fantastic energy and experience and have been crucial in selling the vision. Having a clear plan helps us know where we are heading and what it looks like when we get there. It’s important to get the mix between new and existing staff – we have some strategic managers that have been with us for years who have that organisational memory which is vital.
We have too many children in care. We need more robust decision making around assessing risk, which may mean doing more impactful work earlier so we can avoid care. For those already in care, we want them to live with foster families and not in residential care. We have too many children living more than 20 miles away – we want to bring them home to Stoke-on-Trent. We are a foster-friendly employer and I am going through the foster carer approval process myself.
While we are not where we want to be, our last monitoring visit recognised that the foundations are there for improvement. We are determined not to be rated “inadequate” again. The staff have been amazing – they have worked through all the challenges they have been faced with. I’m in awe of them.
