Half of children’s services continue to show improvement, latest inspections find
Nina Jacobs
Thursday, July 9, 2020
Half of all local authority children’s services departments in England have been judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ contributing to an overall improvement in effectiveness, latest Ofsted statistics have shown.
The inspectorate this week published its findings in a report on children’s social care, months after routine inspections in England were suspended on 17 March due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This meant the inspection cycle was not completed and fewer inspections took place than in previous years, the report states.
Despite the interruption to its inspection process, the inspectorate said the proportion of local authorities to receive its top two ratings as of 31 March had increased to 50 per cent.
Meanwhile fewer local authorities were judged ‘inadequate’ for their children’s social care provision, decreasing to 14 per cent from 22 per cent reported in 2019, it added.
The outcomes for these children’s services relate to inspections carried out between April 2019 and March 2020.
As of April last year, there were 151 local authorities responsible for delivering social care services for children.
Ofsted said its judgement profiles about whether local authorities were improving or declining were drawn from comparisons to their first single inspection framework (SIF) inspection.
After each local authority’s first SIF inspection, 36 per cent of them were judged to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
“The inspection judgement profile for local authorities (LAs) continues to improve from the position after each LA’s first SIF.
“Half of all LAs are now judged good or outstanding and fewer judged inadequate,” the report concludes.
The inspectorate carried out 37 standard and 22 short inspections as well as 41 focused and 29 monitoring visits between April 2019 and March 2020.
It said four of the 26 local authorities that showed improvement had achieved a rating two inspection grades higher than previously.
Barnet, Croydon and Tower Hamlets all improved from ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’ while Telford and Wrekin improved from ‘requires improvement to be good’ to ‘outstanding’, the report explains.
Of 41 focused visits carried out between April 2019 and March 2020 to 39 local authorities, four resulted in areas for priority action for three local authorities.
One local authority had two focused visits, both resulting in an area for priority action.
Four of these focused visits to Devon, Luton, Rutland and Middlesborough were then followed by a standard inspection, after which three of these LAs were judged ‘inadequate’ and one ‘requires improvement to be good’.
The inspectorate said the two most common themes for these visits were ‘children in need/subject to a plan’ (37 per cent) and ‘front door’, meaning the arrangement local authorities have in place to respond to concerns about children from a professional or member of the public (32 per cent).
“The higher number of these types of themed visits is to be expected since our inspections show that these are the most challenging areas for LAs to do well in,” the report explains.
Further findings show a seven per cent increase in the number of children’s homes in England, from 2,304 in 2019 to 2,460 to 31 March 2020.
However, these homes were registered for 12,175 places, a one per cent increase from 12,035 places as of 31 March 2019.
“This continues the long-standing trend of the number of new homes rising faster than the number of new places,” the report states.
For all types of children’s homes, four out of five providers were judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ as at 31 March 2020, a similar grade profile to previous years.
The report also shows the number of independent fostering agencies (IFAs) remains stable with private companies continuing to own most agencies.
Eight IFAs provide fostering services on behalf of local authorities, the same number as in 2019.
Nationally, the percentage of all IFAs judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ remains high at 93 per cent, a slight increase from last year, the inspectorate said.
Figures for other social care providers such as residential special schools show a continued decline from 165 in 2016 to 135 in 2020, a fall of 18 per cent.
Similarly, the number of voluntary adoption agencies has also decreased by 22 per cent from 50 to 39, reversing a trend in previous years where numbers had steadily increased.
Of the remaining two secure training centres (STC) - Medway STC was closed at the end of March 2020 - both were judged ‘requires improvement to be good’, a rating unchanged from last year, the inspectorate added.
