Bradford City Council issued with direction notice
Joe Lepper
Thursday, September 16, 2021
The government has issued a direction notice to Bradford City Council following concerns over a lack of progress in improving its "inadequate" children’s services.
The department was handed Ofsted’s lowest rating following an inspection in 2018.
Further monitoring visits, including in April this year, have found a lack of improvement over the last three years.
The direction notice says that despite “significant investment and service improvement planning” the “breadth and depth of inadequacy” at the department has meant that measures taken by the council have “not led to sufficient positive change for some children”.
Steve Walker, director of Leeds’ strengthening families, protecting children improvement programme, has been appointed as commissioner for children's services at Bradford.
Concerns raised in April’s monitoring visit include delays in identifying risks children face and the need for support.
Inspectors also raised concerns about a lack of safety checks on children living in private fostering arrangements.
“The local authority is starting to make progress in improving services in some specific areas. However, the progress on the quality of core social work practice has been too slow to show impact for children and families,” Ofsted inspectors warned in April.
“This has been exacerbated by the breadth of the inadequacy and maintaining service delivery during the pandemic,” they added.
Four previous monitoring visits have also highlighted “the slow pace of change” in improving the quality of social work, according to the direction notice.
Further “serious concerns” have been raised following the inspection of two council run children’s homes in Bradford. One has been suspended while the other has been rated as "inadequate".
The issues at these homes “raise concerns about the management, oversight and care planning in the council”, says the government.
Kersten England, chief executive of Bradford Council, said: “We welcome Steve Walker as the Government’s appointed commissioner and look forward to working closely with them on our improvement journey. His experience, knowledge and independent findings over the next few months will be important as we work to accelerate our progress to put in place the improvements that Ofsted requires. We will work closely with the commissioner to support him so we can deliver better services for children.
“Ofsted has acknowledged that we are seeing some improvements in our Children’s Services but we know that we have much more to do before they are at the level that we, or our children, should expect. As our district recovers from the pandemic, it is our top priority to make sure that our children get the best start in life. We are determined to do this quickly and the commissioner’s appointment is an important step to achieving this.”
