Ofsted warns of high child protection caseloads at 'good' council

A focused visit to Cambridgeshire County Council by Ofsted found that high turnover, vacancies and absences among social workers in some districts means children in need or on child protection plans are not being seen regularly enough.

Inspectors added that the staffing issues at the council, which was rated "good" overall at its last inspection, are leading to children experiencing too many changes of social workers and children's records not being kept up to date.

Ofsted found that visits to children in need are mostly carried out in line with minimum statutory requirements rather than the needs of individual children. In addition, some child protection plans are process- rather than child-driven and lacked timescales for action.

A year ago the council reorganised its children's services into a district-based model but inspectors found the changes had not been implemented consistently.

Despite the problems it found, Ofsted said that the quality of assessments carried out by the council's social workers are generally of a good quality and in most cases the service delivers positive outcomes for children.

"Strong partnership working ensures that children in Cambridgeshire are protected," a letter outlining the findings states.

"Children's needs are quickly identified and the services provided reduce risks and enable children to remain at home with their families."

Improvements to advocacy services received praise for leading to more children having their voice heard in child protection conferences.

Ofsted said the council needs to ensure social workers and managers have a clear understanding of the expected timescales for single assessments and initial child protection case conferences.

It also told the council it should ensure all records are kept up to date and deal with its recruitment problems so that caseloads can be reduced.

The findings from the focused visit will inform Ofsted's next full inspection of Cambridgeshire. 

In its last full inspection of children's services in Cambridgeshire in 2014, Ofsted rated the council as "good" and said social worker caseloads were appropriate and manageable.

However, the inspection also found that Cambridgeshire's work with children who need help and protection "requires improvement".

Wendi Ogle-Welbourn, executive director for people and communities at Cambridgeshire County Council said: "Inspectors recognised that we have a passionate team of staff and managers who work hard to ensure that the children of Cambridgeshire are protected and speak very positively about the children that they work with.

"Areas for development include a continued and sustained focus on the recruitment and retention of suitably qualified and experienced social workers, which along with other initiatives, will help to address high staff caseloads and ensure that expected timescales are consistently met.

"We continue to undertake a number of recruitment activities including through recruitment fairs, which have been successful. We also have an effective programme of support for social workers in their assessed first year of practice.

"We keep caseloads under constant review. We are flexible and allocate work to teams that have more capacity when others have higher workloads.

"Our average caseloads are below those among our statistical neighbours, but are higher in some areas where recruitment has been more challenging."