The overall “good” rating for children's services in Doncaster issued by Ofsted in March marked a significant improvement from the previous inspection nearly three years ago and vindicated the council's decision to retake control of social care provision from an independent trust in mid-2022.
In 2014, Doncaster Children's Services Trust was given a 10-year contract to run children's social care in the city after a series of serious safeguarding incidents over several years. Rated “inadequate” in 2015, the trust initially improved services achieving a good rating at the next full inspection in November 2017.
By 2022, services had deteriorated significantly resulting in a “requires improvement” overall judgment. All areas of the service had declined, but the quality of leadership at the trust came in for particular criticism with this being rated inadequate. It led to the council ending the contract early and bringing services back “in house” in what it called a “mutual” decision that would deliver better outcomes for children.
‘Impressive’ improvements
This assessment has proved accurate, with Ofsted inspectors describing the scale of improvements as “impressive”. They rated all key service areas as good with the exception of the progress of care leavers which was judged requires improvement.
As the quality of leadership was of greatest concern in 2022, it is the area that has seen the most marked improvement. The root of the problems lay in changes to senior leadership in 2020 that led to reduced management capacity in the department, Ofsted found.
Riana Nelson was appointed in April 2022 as director of children's services (DCS) and chief executive of the trust to steady the ship and oversee the transfer of the department back to the council, a process that Ofsted said was “well managed”. She still holds the DCS function as director of learning, skills and opportunities and alongside assistant director Rebecca Wall has navigated the improvement journey.
Nelson and Wall have focused on getting the fundamentals right (see DCS view) – an improved “line of sight” through better tracking systems and practice panels means they have an accurate evaluation of practice on the ground, and the introduction of simplified forms has made data entry easier for workers, improving children's records.
Inspectors praised the “learning culture” that had been adopted at Doncaster children's services and the commitment to external review and scrutiny of practice.
“Their leadership style has motivated and reconnected the workforce, changed the culture and cultivated a positive working environment where social work can flourish,” the report states. “As a result, staff choose to work for Doncaster, the workforce is stable, staff morale is high and turnover is low.”
The corporate commitment to safeguarding children can be seen through the increase in settings registered for children to live, adopting care as a protected characteristic and creating opportunities for children to express their views.
Meanwhile, Ofsted found there is a “renewed sense of commitment and collaboration” between safeguarding partners, with the council working closely with the police to get them more involved in strategy meetings. “This approach is enabling key partners to better support each other to jointly agree local safeguarding priorities, develop strategies, share resources and measure the impact,” it states.
Key challenges include sourcing sufficient care placements locally, bedding in the new family help service and maintaining low caseloads for social workers. On care leaver support, inspectors identified suitable housing options and the quality of pathway planning as areas that need improving.
The improvements in Doncaster children's services are all the more impressive considering the organisational turmoil of the past decade. The challenge now is to maintain this upward trajectory over the coming years, a level of consistency that eluded the independent trust.
DCS VIEW: INVESTING IN REFLECTIVE PRACTICE BUILDS POSITIVE CULTURE IN DONCASTER
Riana Nelson, director of children's services
When we brought the children's trust together with the council there was a culture of mistrust, of separation, of silo working. My big priority was to create a culture where social work could flourish. We invested a lot of time in staff engagement, being visible, staff forums, setting out our priorities, getting feedback, and just trying to create the environment where people feel safe in the work that they are doing. That was the big thing for me – the inspectors could see that we were living our values. Shortly after we had a whole council survey where more than 60% of our staff responded to it in comparison to 7% the first time around. More than 80% said they were living the values of the council and the directorate, they felt supported by their managers, and that we were creating the safe space to test practice and deliver good services to children. That's the thing that I'm most proud of in the report.
At the beginning of this process we were losing more social workers than we were recruiting and there were issues around terms and conditions. Through the work we have done around building the culture and trust, and bringing people together, we've been able to reset the dial. We've been clear that our practice improvement has been based around consistent supervision and good assessments, the absolute basics of practice.
We also did some work around how we supported our newly qualified colleagues and what progression looks like. We've made a commitment that for every ASYE (assisted year in employment) practitioner we bring on board, we will align them with an agency worker for the first six months so that the impact isn't felt by the rest of the service.
All of those things build a framework for people to improve their practice continuously; and then you start attracting social workers. I'm pleased to say we're now recruiting permanent social workers quite regularly.
The main thing for me is that we are improving the outcomes for children, young people and families and the Ofsted inspection was recognition of all the work that's gone into that. It was wonderful to see our social workers wanting to have conversations with inspectors. They wanted to showcase their best work – they know what ‘good’ looks like, which is helpful.
Yes, there are still areas of improvement, we know that and we've got clear plans about them. Our team managers and service leaders are leading by example by having reflective conversations and reflective supervision. That's an important foundation for practice. In the report, you can see some areas of excellence, so for me it is about how that is then consistently applied. There is something about consistency and aspiration and ambition, and that's something we're talking a lot about in the entire directorate.
