Ofsted praises children's social care progress in Birmingham

Inspectors visited the council, which has been rated inadequate by Ofsted in all six of its inspections since 2009, to examine its efforts to improve services for children with disabilities and child in need plans.

They found that while "considerable work" still needs to be done the authority was making progress as a result of reduced social worker caseloads and a more stable workforce. Birmingham children's services are due to be taken over by an independent trust in April 2018.

The monitoring visit report said the more manageable caseloads had enabled social workers to regularly visit families and do more direct work to understand the wishes and feelings of children and young people.

Meanwhile, thresholds for intervention were being applied appropriately and regular reassessments of child in need cases were happening in most instances, leading to "a more robust response to changing need than seen previously".

The council's 2016 decision to move its children's disability service from education to children's services is also delivering improvements by ensuring "a focus on safer practice".

However, the monitoring visit did identify a number of ongoing problems.

The quality of management oversight of cases was found to remain variable and the case recording was "not consistently good".

And while good partnership working was found to be happening in many cases, Ofsted found a lack of effective multi-agency work in a number of complex cases with some agencies not attending child in need meetings and an "unwillingness to share information" by mental health services that was delaying the progression of necessary work.

However, inspectors noted that the council's new practice evaluation approach had enabled it to identify many of these problems and start work to fix them.

"I'm really pleased that Ofsted has again confirmed our steady progress," said Brigid Jones, Birmingham's lead member for children, families and schools.

"As with the earlier monitoring report, we know there is still much to do, but the important thing is that we know where we need to improve. We again have tangible evidence that sustainable improvements are being made."

Ofsted has also published a monitoring visit report on the London Borough of Wandsworth, which focused on permanence arrangements for children in care.

It found that while many of the "essential components" for improvement were in place, the quality of that progress remains patchy.

Inspectors criticised how children were still waiting too long for a permanent home to be found and highlighted how a fifth of under-threes were waiting more than two years on average for an adoptive family placement.

"These are considerable delays for adopters, leading to missed opportunities to pursue adoption quickly for some children," said the report.

Ofsted said Wandsworth needs to accelerate the introduction of its new permanency tracker tool that will enable managers to follow cases through the entire public law outline process.

"In summary, the progress that inspectors have seen in other areas on previous monitoring visits is not yet fully reflected in achieving permanence soon enough for some vulnerable children," it concluded.

Ofsted rated Wandsworth inadequate in December 2015.