Agenda item

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Specialist Children’s Services and the Corporate Director of Social Care, Health and Wellbeing providing the Committee with an update on key themes and lessons learned from the Ofsted findings regarding other local authorities. 

Mr T Stevenson, Head of Quality Assurance, and Ms E Perkins, Executive Officer, West Kent, were in attendance for this item.

1.            Mr Stevenson introduced the report and responded to comments and questions from Members, as follows:-

a)    in response to a concern that Kent may not be compared on a ‘like for like’ basis with other local authorities, as it had a much higher number of children in care and UASC, Mr Stevenson confirmed that these factors did indeed have a substantial impact on Kent’s performance, along with the large size and diverse nature of the county, which added the challenge of service co-ordination and achieving consistency across the county. Mr Segurola added that the parameters on which inspections were based (ie were children kept safe, were families in need supported and were good outcomes being achieved for children in care) were the same for every authority, regardless of size;

b)    a comment was made that a nearby authority had progressed from an ‘inadequate’ to a ‘good’ rating, despite placing many children at a distance from their homes, many of them being placed in Kent. Surely this would compromise the quality of the supervision, monitoring and review that they could give those children.  In addition, with the advent of Staying Put and Closer To Home, which aimed, respectively, to help young people to stay with their foster carers up to the age of 21 and to take up independent living accommodation near the area in which they had been in care, children and young people placed in Kent by other local authorities would remain in Kent for longer as young adults, and would need support to do so.  Surely this support role would fall, at least partly, upon Kent;

c)    the tri-boroughs had attracted praise from Ofsted for the way in which their elected Members scrutinised services, and a question was raised about the extent to which Kent could demonstrate a similar level of scrutiny, for example, by the minutes of its meetings reflecting effective challenging and questioning;

d)    asked by the Chairman to highlight areas in which Kent performed less well, Mr Segurola said that Kent had some areas of outstanding practice and some areas less so, for example, achieving consistency of service across the county. The current year had seen increased demand, continuing difficulties around recruitment and retention of social workers and social work managers and a resulting increase in caseloads, which would inevitably have an impact on the quality and consistency of practice. There was always more work to do and Kent would always persevere to raise standards.  Mr Ireland added that consistency of practice was a challenge for any large authority, and performance monitoring dashboards showed the ebb and flow of strengths and lesser strengths and how these were affected by staffing levels.  Kent would need to demonstrate that it had a mechanism by which it could address these challenges. The Chairman asked that an update report on social worker recruitment and retention be made to the committee’s next meeting. Mr Segurola added that regular ‘health check’ reports were produced, using parameters set by the Local Government Association, and briefing notes for Members, setting out the pointers for inspection and the questions they should be asking officers, would be sent to all Members later in the summer.  Mr Ireland reminded Members that scrutiny took place in other forums, including the Children’s Services Improvement Panel and the Corporate Parenting Panel, both of which received regular reports of performance data. The previous meeting of this committee had looked at areas of work currently rated red, which had led to reports on placement stability being made to the Corporate Parenting Panel in July and planned for this committee in September. Ofsted would look at this audit trail as part of an inspection;

e)     the recent Corporate Parenting Select Committee had undertaken some in-depth scrutiny of issues, including child sexual exploitation, and had gained much understanding from this work.  This represented more scrutiny than had been undertaken of these issues by many other local authorities, and should surely be acknowledged and praised in an Ofsted inspection; and

f)     in response to a question about the role Members would play in an Ofsted inspection, Mr Ireland explained that recent changes to the inspection framework had shifted emphasis away from interviews with Members to inspection of case files and interviews with social workers and social work managers. Only the Cabinet Member for Specialist Children’s Services and the Leader of the Council were likely to be interviewed. The Lead Inspector would advise the County Council at the start of an inspection of how the inspection would proceed, within the inspection framework.

2.            RESOLVED that the information set out in the report, and given in response to comments and questions, be noted, and an update report on social worker recruitment and retention be made to the committee’s next meeting.