Staff departures threaten progress at 'inadequate' council, Ofsted warns
Joe Lepper
Friday, August 31, 2018
A council is struggling to cope with a high turnover of social workers and rising caseloads, two years after inspectors rated its children's services as "inadequate", Ofsted has found.
A monitoring visit by Ofsted to Dudley Council last month found that too many social workers are leaving the local authority, impacting on the workloads of the remaining staff.
Inspectors said problems around staff retention are threatening to undermine progress already made to turn around the department, which was handed Ofsted's lowest rating in April 2016.
Ofsted notes that senior managers are aware of staffing problems and have taken action to recruit and keep social workers, including offering comprehensive training for new staff and experienced social workers to make the step up to management.
But despite the efforts caseloads remain too high, inspectors found.
"High staff turnover presents challenges, which have started to have an adverse impact on workloads," states Ofsted's report.
"Despite progress made, the local authority is experiencing competitive workforce pressures which could undermine the pace of progress and their ability to sustain improvements in social work practice.
"While senior managers are doing much to recruit and retain staff, caseloads in case management and assessment teams are too high.
"Further improvement is required in the management of staff turnover and caseloads. Some children experience delay in social workers progressing their plans, including delay in having their cases closed to statutory services."
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Progress noted by inspectors includes councillors and senior officers having clear strategic plans in place to improve provision.
Staff value good access to senior managers, Ofsted adds, which includes weekly briefings. However, inspectors also found that management oversight of frontline social work was variable.
"Some managers are reflective and bring critical evaluation to their discussions with social workers. Others are not sufficiently professionally curious or challenging," adds Ofsted's report.
Dudley's lead member for children's services Angus Lees said: "The inspectors have identified points for improvement but there is not anything they have mentioned that has come as any great surprise to us.
"We are under no illusions we still have a way to go - but we are determined to get there.
"There should be no doubt that since the inspection in 2016, we have worked extremely hard to make real changes.
"We are determined this will be reflected during the full inspection by Ofsted later this year."
