Children's services in Manchester receive 'inadequate' rating

An unannounced inspection by Ofsted found that there were 486 cases that had waited “a considerable time” for a social work assessment, meaning children were not being assessed or having their needs supported.

“The authority was aware of this issue but had taken insufficient action to address the problem,” the report states.

Inspectors said the problem was partly down to poor quality assurance and management oversight, which were found to be “ineffective in dealing with serious drift in the completion of assessments”.

High caseloads for social workers were also found to be a problem. Inspectors said this meant social workers were unable to prioritise and address children’s needs effectively, resulting in some children and families not receiving good-quality or timely services.

One of the contributing factors to high demand was found to be a “poor understanding of thresholds” by some of the statutory partners together with poor engagement of agencies in early intervention work.

The inspection also found that too many children, particularly those of black and ethnic minority heritage, are waiting to be adopted in the city.

“Some children have not been adopted despite a plan for adoption,” the report states. "The pace of improvement in this service is too slow.”

In addition, concerns were raised about council processes relating to children missing from care and cases of child sexual exploitation.

“Processes are not well-embedded, meaning that the local authority does not learn effectively from these episodes,” the report states.

Mike Livingstone, director of children’s services for Manchester City Council, said the authority fully accepts that services for children are not yet as good as it wants them to be.

“Our absolute priority now, as it always has been, is to ensure the continued safety and wellbeing of children and young people in the city,” he said.

“However, while we acknowledge that services need to improve, we are confident that children who are at risk of harm are properly protected."

He said “no evidence” was found that young people are not safe in the city.

“Ofsted’s judgment that children were at potential risk of harm was largely based on a backlog of social work assessments,” he added.

“Since the inspection this backlog has been eradicated for good. We have also reduced the number of cases that need to be dealt with by our social workers.”

Manchester becomes the sixth authority to be rated inadequate since Ofsted introduced its new single inspection framework last October.

On Monday, an inspection of children’s services in Portsmouth resulted in the authority being given a “requires improvement” rating.

Out of the 31 authorities that have been inspected under the framework, a total of 16 have been assessed as requiring improvement, while nine have been judged to be “good”.