Ofsted praises CSE progress in Bromley

Bromley Council received the lowest rating across each of the three main inspection areas - child protection, children in care, and leadership - following an inspection in May 2016, with Ofsted stating that children were being "left in neglectful and abusive situations for too long".

A quarterly monitoring visit, the fourth to be conducted since the inspection report was published, found that the local authority is making "substantive progress" in improving services for children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation, and "some progress" for those who go missing.

"In the cases reviewed on this visit, no inadequate practice was found and aspects of good practice were identified," a letter outlining the findings of the visit states.

The letter adds that strengthened partnership collaboration is leading to improved multi-agency work to appropriately identify and respond to risk in most cases.

"Decisions are timely and proportionate, and taken by managers who demonstrate increased confidence in their professional judgment," the letter states.

Inspectors cited the positive role of the newly-established "Atlas team" of specialist workers - includiung experienced police officers trained in CSE, missing children, gangs and serious youth violence, which is co-located with social workers and practitioners from Barnardo's - in supporting CSE work.

"Inspectors found increasingly effective management oversight, greater stability in the workforce and a steady reduction in caseloads," the letter states.

"This has enabled social workers to have time to build trusting and purposeful relationships with children, and this is reducing risk."

Inspectors said the local authority now knows which children go missing and which children are at risk of sexual exploitation. They added that centrally co-ordinated data is more reliable and has improved management oversight, enabling appropriate support to be targeted to those most at risk.

Work to understand the links to children who are involved with or affiliated to gangs has begun more recently, with inspectors stating that more work is needed to understand the local profile of children at risk and to evaluate data from return home interviews, in order to identify trends and locations of concern.

Meanwhile, the current range of commissioned services for children at risk of sexual exploitation was found to be "limited".

"This means that not all children can access the right support quickly enough," the letter states.

However, inspectors did say that the local authority is using its improved understanding of the needs of this group of children to consider its future commissioning approach, to ensure that a range of accessible services is available to meet the needs of children.