Ofsted tells two councils to improve children's services

Both Lewisham Council and West Sussex Council were rated as "requires improvement" by the inspectorate following visits in the final week of October.

The report for Lewisham, which was previously rated "outstanding" for safeguarding and "good" for looked-after children services in 2012, said that while standards for looked-after children have been maintained and those for care leavers have improved, services for children in need of early help and protection have deteriorated.

Inspectors said that prior to the appointments of the present director of children and young people’s services, who was appointed in September 2015, and the director of children’s social care, the senior leadership team went through "a period of instability".

"This has created legacy issues within aspects of the services that have declined or are poorly co-ordinated, exemplified by the current early help offer," the report states.

"Corporately, the leadership and governance arrangements in Lewisham have not been robust, or sufficiently rigorous, in challenging, monitoring and driving social work practice to ensure that all services for children and young people are good.

"Senior managers do not understand the quality of services well enough because they do not consider a wide enough range of data."

The report for West Sussex, which was previously rated "adequate" for child protection in 2013, states that while services are not yet good, inspectors saw evidence of some positive work delivered for children that was improving outcomes for them.

Inspectors said there was a strong senior leadership supporting a comprehensive improvement plan which has involved a whole-systems redesign of services.

However a number of weaknesses remain including the timeliness of initial child protection conferences, which while having improved, was found to remain a challenge.

Inspectors also expressed concern about a small number of care leavers living in bed and breakfast accommodation, and too many children experiencing changes of social worker, affecting the stability of relationships between workers and young people.

Under Ofsted's single inspection framework, increasing numbers of local authorities are receiving one of the two lowest grades.

As of November last year, 77 per cent of the 69 authorities inspected had been rated "requires improvement" (52 per cent), or "inadequate" (25 per cent).