CHILDREN'S Services run by Somerset County Council have been branded "inadequate"by Ofsted in another damning report published this morning, (March 27).

Now a team from Essex County Council have been asked to work with Somerst County Council to help make improvements and make a response to the report to Minister for Children and Families - Edward Timpson.

It follows two years of failings and controversy - the latest of which saw interim director of Children's Services Peter Lewis - leave.

The council maintains that he was sacked but Mr Lewis said that he had resigned. The local authority was also called to a meeting with the government last October over it's failings.

Julian Wooster took over as permanent director of Children's Services two weeks ago.

The report out today said there had been a "corporate failure" to keep children safe in Somerset and that because there had been a "continual churn" in the senior leadership team over the last ten years, it had inhibited the development of the service, severely restricting the authority's progress and seriously affecting the quality of services to children and families.

The council said it is reinstating "its commitment to rapid improvement" and that it was "fully accepting" of the report.

“We fully accept the key findings of this Ofsted inspection and the short-comings it highlights,” said Julian Wooster.

 “Services are not good enough and improvements need to be made quickly and I am here to help make that happen.”

This is Somerset’s first inspection under Ofsted’s new single inspection framework introduced in 2014.

Although it cannot therefore be directly compared to the previous inspection report, it is an indication of how the Council’s Children’s Services are performing now.

It is concerned with the day-to-day operations of the service and does not comment on policy or funding.

“Accepting all the criticism in this report, we must also look at the positives,” said Mr Wooster who took up his post two weeks ago. “There are examples of good practice, signs that we are starting to turn a corner. We are building on those signs of improvement but it has to happen faster.”

Ofsted highlighted leadership, management and governance, partnership and quality of practice as areas which needed priority and immediate action.

They said there are widespread or serious failures which: "cause children to be harmed or at risk of harm and in the delivery of services for looked after children and care leavers which result in their welfare not being safeguarded and promoted.

"Leaders and managers have not been able to demonstrate sufficient understanding of failures and have been ineffective in prioritising, challenging and making improvements."

The report looked at:

  • Children who need help and protection
  • Children looked after and achieving permanence:

- Adoption performance

- Experiences and progress of care leaders

  • Leadership, management and governance

All bar Adoption performance, which was given "requires improvement" were given an inadequate by the statutory body.

The report also said:

Leadership, management and governance:

  • There has been a corporate failure to keep children safe in Somerset. The continual churn in the senior leadership team over the last ten years, including eight different Directors of Children’s Services, has inhibited the development of the service, severely restricted the local authority’s progress and, as a consequence, is seriously affecting the quality of services to children and families.
  •  Oversight, scrutiny and challenge from corporate leaders has not been sufficiently robust. Chronic instability at all levels of the organisation, poor practice and a culture of mistrust have been allowed to persist.
  • The Improvement Board has been ineffective. Four changes of Improvement Board chairs over a period of two years have contributed to a lack of a rapid and purposeful response to the findings from previous Ofsted inspections and the Department for Education (DfE) Improvement Notice.
  • A high number of locum staff used to cover managerial and social work posts, and the continual changes in the workforce, have limited the authority’s ability to achieve a consistently acceptable standard and quality of social work practice.
  • Services to protect children at risk of child sexual exploitation are underdeveloped; the scale and the prevalence of the problem are not sufficiently understood across the partnership. When children go missing, return home visits are not routinely undertaken and findings are not used to prepare and plan for better interventions and services.
  •  Partners are not fully committed or contributing effectively to the safety and protection of children and families. The partnership has failed to establish a shared understanding of the arrangements for early help and thresholds for children’s social care are set too high.

Quality of Practice:

  • High caseloads, unassessed risk, poor management oversight, children not being seen often enough by their social workers and cases closed too soon, are illustrative of some of the serious and widespread failures to adequately protect children in Somerset.
  • Achieving permanency for children lacks direction and purposeful oversight from the Independent Reviewing Officer service. A heavy reliance on the use of locum staff and high caseloads means that there is considerable delay and drift in achieving permanency for some children.
  • Support to help care leavers into education and employment is insufficiently coordinated and the number of care leavers who are not in education employment or training (NEET) is high.

Patrick Flaherty, Chief Executive of the Council, added: “The report highlights a need for stability and our appointment of a permanent Director of Children’s Services is a big step forward – Julian and his team have the undivided support of this Council. Inspectors have confidence that the current senior leadership team knows what needs to be done.

“It also emphasises the need for better partnership working and we will continue to focus on that through the Improvement Board and Somerset’s Local Safeguarding Children Board.”

Quality of practice, adoption and care leaders were identified as areas of improvement.

Despite the negatives, the report did highlight areas of the local authority's strength including the hard work of social workers and their determination to improve outcomes for Somerset's children and families, the current senior leadership team who Ofsted say know what needs to be done and assessing health needs for looked after children.

The Somerset Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) has also been reviewed by Ofsted and found to be inadequate.

Independent of the Council, the board consists of representatives from a range of organisations including the local authority, Police and health organisations and its role is to hold agencies to account for their safeguarding arrangements and highlight areas that need improvement.

Inspectors identified a number of strengths and improvements in the LSCB. However, they also found that the scrutiny and assurance arrangements were not sufficiently holding partners to account and that early help arrangements and the child sexual exploitation strategy were not yet having sufficient impact.

Sally Halls, independent chair of the LSCB, said: “While I am pleased Ofsted has recognised a number of areas where the LSCB has done good work, there is also a great deal that it can and should do better.

“More productive partnership working is essential and I am already working with the new Director of Children’s Services and LSCB partners to implement an improvement plan which will help the board challenge and ensure the effectiveness of local services for children.

“The children of Somerset have a right to the best quality services and we must not rest until we have achieved that across the entire LSCB partnership, for all children.”

Somerset County Councillor Mike Rigby said: "After two years of failings, today's OFSTED report highlighting continuing widespread and serious failures in Somerset's Children's Services give me major cause for concern.  

"These are the services designed to protect the most vulnerable children in our communities and it doesn't seem as though this administration is capable of bringing the service up to an acceptable level.

"The report does praise the hard work of social workers but criticises leadership of the service.

"We again have to question the decision to spend £1m on Peter Lewis and Kate Lovell, given that no real progress was made under their interim leadership.

"Since then we've had another interim director before last week's appointment of a permanent director.

"While we have not yet seen what Mr Wooster is capable of, how much longer can we wait before the political leadership acts decisively to improve matters? 

"The slide in performance began under now Leader John Osman when he was Cabinet Member for Children's Services.

"For the good of the most vulnerable children in Somerset, John now needs to consider his position.

"Frances Nicholson, the current Cabinet Member for Children's Services must follow Councillor Huxtable's example, do the honourable thing and resign immediately.

"It is clear that she is not capable of directing the required changes to ensure that children are properly protected from harm."

 

More to follow