Stoke-on-Trent rated 'inadequate' amid child protection concerns
Joe Lepper
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Stoke-on-Trent City Council's children's services department is failing to protect children and is blighted by "poor leadership", according to a damning Ofsted report.
The inspectorate has downgraded the department to "inadequate" for overall effectiveness, after finding a raft of child protection failures during an inspection in February.
Ofsted also rated leadership, support for children in need of help and protection, and support for care leavers and children in care as inadequate.
Inspectors warn that "vulnerable children are not safeguarded in Stoke-on-Trent". Thresholds for support are not being consistently applied, and there is ineffective management of risk.
A particular area of concern is a lack of foster care placements, with 56 children at the time of the inspection being placed in unregulated placements, some of which the council knows are "unsafe", warn inspectors. These are placements where the suitability of carers has not been fully assessed or approved.
"Management decisions, oversight and rationale about why these unregulated placements are appropriate and how children's safety will be ensured are missing from all children's case records," say inspectors in their report.
Senior managers are also severely criticised, for not understanding the extent of the problems or being able to make improvements.
The council's children's services had been rated as "requires improvement" in its last full inspection in 2015.
However, a focused visit in 2018 looking at the council's support for vulnerable teenagers raised concerns about high social worker caseloads and the quality of record keeping.
Ofsted's latest visit found that most of its recommendations made after last year's focused visit have not been acted upon.
"Children are not being protected, and they experience serious and widespread delays in having their needs met across children's services," states Ofsted's inspection report.
"Leaders have not sufficiently understood the extent and impact of the failures and have been ineffective in prioritising, challenging and making improvements.
"As a result of poor leadership, management oversight and an absence of clearly evaluated performance information, services for children have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015."
Social workers are not being supported "to practice safely" with none receiving one to one case supervision, the report adds.
"This means that there is little management direction and challenge to their work," states the report.
In addition, children's views are not being taken into account and the council is failing to work effectively with families in areas such as gaining consent to investigate concerns and to voluntarily accommodate children.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council has pledged to act on the report's findings, with extra funding and a new management team appointed.
"We take the ruling by Ofsted extremely seriously and are very concerned by the findings," said council leader Ann James.
"In carrying out their inspection, Ofsted officials spent time with frontline social workers. They found that our workers are dedicated and work extremely hard to support children and families, but that there are a number of challenges with social work practice and that more support and challenge is needed from managers.
"It means that our practices are not robust enough to provide the best protection to meet the needs of our city's vulnerable young people. This is unacceptable and we are committed to improving our service at pace for our children."
Stoke's director of children's services Louise Rees left earlier this year, after more than two years in the role, to join Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council as its director of children's services and skills.
The department is currently led by an interim director, Mark Barratt, who started on the first day of the inspection.
Barratt was previously interim director of quality and performance at Surrey County Council.