Agenda item

To receive a report on the positive findings of the Ofsted Inspection of the Authority’s Children’s Services, including the overall effectiveness of services being graded overall ‘Outstanding’.

Cabinet received a report on the findings of the Ofsted Inspection of the Authority’s Children ‘s Services that had taken place in March 2020.

The inspection had taken place between 9 - 13 March 2020. The inspection team consisted of four of Her Majesty’s Inspectors from Ofsted and two additional Inspectors for Fostering, Adoption and Residential Care and for the Virtual School respectively.

The inspection team had been onsite for five working days and had read case files, observed staff working with children and families and other professionals and discussed with staff and safeguarding partners the help and care given to children and young people. They had also talked directly to children, young people and their families, including the Children in Care Council and SEND Youth Forum, Foster Carers and Adopters. They had visited a range of Council venues where services for children and young people were based and delivered, including Quadrant, the Oxford Centre, Riverside Children’s Centre, Whitley Bay Customer First Centre, Balliol Wing (Adopt North East) and The Lodge (Leaving Care).

Ofsted had published their findings by way of Report on 15 April 2020. The Summary of findings was as follows:

“Senior leaders share a relentless commitment to continuous improvement. Outward looking and open to challenge, they have succeeded in creating a learning environment in which social work is thriving. Strategic partnerships are mature, well developed and highly effective. The quality of performance management information is excellent. The reach of the quality assurance framework is extensive. Using a rich combination of facts, figures and findings, senior leaders are proactive in responding to shortfalls in practice and performance. They are daring and imaginative in pushing the boundaries in order to improve the experiences and progress of children in need of help and protection, children in care and care leavers.

Partner agencies have enthusiastically embraced early help. Further changes to the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) have significantly increased its impact and effectiveness. The interface between children s social care and early help has been strengthened. The local authority s preferred method of social work has trans formed the way in which they, and their partners talk with children and families and to each other families and to each other about what worries them, what is working well and about what worries them, what is working well and what they need to do about it. As a result, most children get the right level of the right level of help and protection help and protection at the right time.

When it is no longer possible for children to live safely at home, the local authority pulls out all the stops to try to make sure that children stay connected with their friends, families and communities. Most children in care live in good-quality placements within a 20-mile radius of their family homes. The local authority is in touch with virtually all of its care leavers, the vast majority of whom are living in safe and suitable accommodation.”

Ofsted reported that it judged the overall effectiveness of Children’s Social Care Services in North Tyneside to be ‘Outstanding’. A comparison with the graded judgments of other local authorities that had been inspected to date by Ofsted establish that North Tyneside Council was one of only fourteen Local Authorities to be graded Outstanding in the country.

Two formal recommended areas for development were made by Ofsted as follows:

1.    Supervision and management oversight are not of a consistently high quality or always clearly recorded.

2.    In the absence of good-quality life-story work, children and young people are not routinely getting the help they need to make sense of their, and their families’, histories and better understand why they are in care.

Officers had devised and would submit a Post-Inspection Plan to address the two recommendations to the Secretary of State and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector within the prescribed timescale (no later than 21 July 2020).

Additionally, other areas identified for development but not subject to formal recommendations, not least the judgment that the experience of children in care and care leavers was ‘Good but not ‘Outstanding’, would be subject to relentless and focused improvement work by Officers in the coming twelve months.

Delivery of the Plan would be subject to regular scrutiny and review by the Senior Management Team for Children, Young People and Learning. The Plan was owned by the Director of Children’s Services.

The Ofsted Report and the Authority’s Post-Inspection Action Plan were appended to the report at Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 respectively.

It was anticipated that progress by the Authority in relation to the two recommendations would be part of future Annual Conversations, meetings between the Regional Director of Ofsted and the Head of Service, scheduled for May of each year. Additionally, it was anticipated that progress in relation to the recommendations would be part of any subsequent inspection of Children’s Services by Ofsted.

The Elected Mayor congratulated all staff involved and the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Learning for their efforts in achieving the ‘Outstanding’ judgement.

Cabinet considered the following decision options: to accept the recommendations set out in paragraph 1.2 of the report, or alternatively, to not approve the recommendations, and provides an alternative response to the Report by Ofsted following the Inspection of Children’s Services.

Resolved that (1)the positive findings of Ofsted, including the overall effectiveness of services being graded ‘Outstanding’ be noted; and

(2)  the areas for development identified by Ofsted and the commitment by the

Service Area to address these and to continue to improve and develop services for children and young people, parents and carers be noted.

(Reason for decision: The recommendation affords an acknowledgement by Cabinet of the positive findings by Ofsted and endorses the actions identified by Officers to respond to two areas of development recommended by Ofsted.)

At this point the Elected Mayor thanked the Young Mayor and partners for attending the meeting.