Ofsted rates council's children's services as 'requires improvement'

Inspectors said that some services for children provided by Northumberland County Council have deteriorated over the past four years.

Services for children in need of help and protection, looked-after children and care leavers were all found to require improvement.

However, the council’s performance on adoption, and the effectiveness of the local safeguarding children board were both rated as “good”. Inspectors said the deterioration in some services was partly down to changes in senior positions.
 
“There have been significant changes of senior personnel in the last year, including the appointment of a new head of service for children’s social care,” the inspection report states.

“This means stability is relatively recent. Senior leaders recognised the scope of this role was too large and acknowledged during inspection the reduction of additional performance management capacity to the post was withdrawn too soon. This adversely impacted on the effectiveness of management oversight.”

Inspectors said the local authority’s corporate vision and service priorities are appropriately ambitious and well aligned with those of other strategic bodies.

But added that this has not yet resulted in consistently good services for children.

"There is a gap between high-level strategy and ambition, which are good, and practice on the ground, which remains too variable,” the report states.

Robert Arckless, lead member for children's services at Northumberland County Council, said: “We are already addressing the areas for improvement, including introducing more robust procedures where children are placed outside their immediate family and reducing the caseloads of social workers.

“An action plan is being drawn up to ensure we address all the findings of the report in a timely manner.

“This is a difficult, complex and sometimes challenging area of work but the public can have confidence we are doing all we can to protect and support children.”

He added that areas of good practice identified by Ofsted are “down to the the hard work staff do every single day in what is a very demanding area”.

“It is heartening to see our work around adoption getting national recognition, while our local safeguarding children board has been rightly praised for its joined-up approach in dealing with some extremely sensitive issues.

“There are also some positive findings around the ‘consistently good’ work of the disabled children’s team and the growing range of targeted early help available.”