Children's home standards on the rise

Provisional data published by the inspectorate today shows that 16 per cent of the 545 homes inspected between October and December last year received an “outstanding” Ofsted judgment for overall effectiveness, while 60 per cent were graded good.

By comparison, just 11 per cent of the 491 inspections carried out between July and September 2013 resulted in an outstanding judgment, with 57 per cent receiving a good rating.

The data also shows that just 23 homes – four per cent of the overall total – received an “inadequate” grading from Ofsted in the final three months of 2013. Over the previous quarter the inadequate rate was double that at eight per cent.

The new figures come as a welcome boost to the residential care sector, which has had to adapt to a tougher inspection framework introduced last year – in 2012/13, 16 per cent of homes were judged to be outstanding, but this figure has dropped to 11 per cent for the nine-month period up to 31 December 2013.

In addition, the data shows that local authority and voluntary sector-run children’s homes are performing better than privately run homes.

Of those homes that received a good or better overall effectiveness judgment, 86 per cent were voluntary run, 82 per cent were local authority operated and 73 per cent privately owned. Local authority and voluntary sector homes were also more likely to receive an outstanding judgment (21 and 19 per cent respectively) than privately run homes (14 per cent).

No voluntary-run homes were rated inadequate, compared to three per cent of council-run and five per cent of private homes.

These trends were mirrored across the nine months up to the end of December.