In late 2024, following a positive visit by Ofsted, Stoke-on-Trent City Council exited special measures. It marked the end of more than five years of Ofsted monitoring visits, put in place after the council's children's services department was rated “inadequate” in March 2019.
“It symbolises the fact that Stoke has recovered from the nadir of 2019,” says Simon White, who has been interim director of children's services in Stoke for the past year after Lisa Lyons' departure to be DCS in Oxfordshire.
“Reading between the lines, [Ofsted] say we're going in the right direction and the issues that they raised were issues you might encounter in many councils, such as supervision, audit and a clear line of sight into practice.
“It took a lot of hard work for the department to get from where it was to where it is now. It was the work of many hands – I certainly wouldn't try to claim credit for it.”
White says the aim is to be “good” by the time of the next full inspection expected at the end of the year. He adds: “We're not at all complacent and know we've still got things to do to get there.”
Delivering that ambition will be the job of Neil MacDonald, who is taking over from White as corporate director of children and families in April after eight years as strategic lead for safeguarding practice and workforce at Coventry City Council.
A key factor in the department's improvement has been the implementation of a five-year improvement plan that prioritised early help through the use of restorative practice and family group conferencing (see DCS view). Of equal importance has been work to alleviate the impact of poverty and rethinking the response to domestic violence, explains White.
As part of a more “sophisticated” response to domestic violence, the council works with partner agencies to provide specialist support for victims “rather than thinking child protection procedures first”, he explains.
Stoke has significant levels of deprivation and poverty was a factor for many of the children services in Stoke were working with, White says.
“Where we encounter families in difficulty because of poverty, we want to have different responses to simply focusing on child protection,” he adds. “As we've done that, the numbers of children entering our services has reduced.” This has included supporting families with accessing benefits, linking with community resources and getting support from local charities such as food banks.
Another early help scheme that has delivered impact is Family Matters, a project initially funded by a public health grant that aims to improve access to community resources such as faith organisations and sports groups.
“One of the things we found in children's services is that we were so focused on statutory work, we weren't really aware of the resources which were available in the community for families. For us as a department, Family Matters has made all of that visible,” explains White.
A reduction in children coming into care – although not reflected in the most recent Department for Education data (see graphics) – has been accompanied by improvements in the children's social worker workforce with caseloads falling and more agency practitioners moving into permanent positions, White explains.
Despite the progress on several fronts, the challenge for White's successor to build and maintain these is likely to be significant and exacerbated by pressure on the children's services budget. But he will be taking on a department heading in the right direction.
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DCS VIEW: Early help focus pays dividends for council and Stoke families
Simon White, interim director of children's services, Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Room to Grow, our improvement plan, recreated an infrastructure for early help in the immediate aftermath of austerity. Stoke, like many places, had cut its support for those kinds of services and the hypothesis was this was driving our ever-increasing numbers of children entering care, which was why the council was financially challenged.
Despite the financial pressures, the council invested several million pounds into new early help services. There's a locality model with trusted local organisations which co-ordinate support for families in each of those localities.
Another thing that Room to Grow emphasised was the role of family group conferences, which is now an important part of the current government's strategy for children's social care. We also introduced restorative practice, which is a philosophical approach.
With partners, we've done work on the principles of restorative practice, and that has a significant impact on the way that we respond when families are in trouble.
We know from the research that if children can be safely sustained in their family relationships, the outcomes are usually going to be better and that some children, when they come into care, don't thrive - generally the older the child is when they enter the care system, the harder it is to get good outcomes. Restorative practice underpins that moral focus and way of looking at the world, and that's had a significant impact on practice and the outcomes that we've achieved.
Stoke had the highest levels of looked-after children last year but in the current financial year there are 100 fewer children who have entered care than in the year before. It took five years for Stoke to reach the unenviable position of having the largest number of children in care per head of any English local authority, and it will probably take five years to return to the norm.
We also need to be alert to feedback in the system, so if we are trying to support a child, to avoid [them] entering care, we need to really have eyes on them collectively and, obviously, sometimes you have to act decisively and quickly.
You have to achieve a virtuous circle. If the 100 children who didn't enter care had done so they would have created a financial pressure of about £30 million on Stoke City Council, given the average cost of a child in care and the length of time they spend there. So, we've eased the pressure on Stoke by about £30mn and that's what gives you the breathing room to carry on investing in early help.
The thing that can throw you off track is if you fail to make the reduction in high cost spending, because then people will argue that this investment in early help isn't working. As long as we can carry on this trajectory, I think the investment will be safe, and, in fact, [the savings] will increase over time.
