Agenda item

Report of the Improvement Director and Independent Chair of the Improvement Partnership (CS/20/13), attached.

The Committee received the Report of the Independent Chair of the Improvement Partnership and the Improvement Director (CS/20/13) updating Members on the response to the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) undertaken in January 2020 where the Council was judged to be inadequate. 

As part of the inspection, Ofsted found that senior leaders did not know about the extent of the failures to protect some of the most vulnerable children and young people from harm.  Overall Ofsted identified eight areas for improvement, including the concerns about care leavers, and the Council immediately prioritised a response to ensure that children and young people were safe and that concerns identified by Ofsted were addressed.

Due to COVID-19, the publication of the Inspection Report had been delayed from March and as a result, the approach to improvement had taken two key phases to date:

·       Phase 1 (April – July): an approach to improvement which was focused on addressing the context of the pandemic, ensuring vulnerable children, young people and their families were safe and supported appropriately and addressing the priority areas for improvement. During this phase the governance of improvement sat with the Devon Children and Families Partnership Executive.

·       Phase 2 (July – November); a more comprehensive improvement plan was developed covering all the deficits identified in the ILACS and included the CV-19 response post lockdown. During this phase the governance of improvement became the responsibility of the Improvement Partnership, comprised of elected members, senior council officers, senior representatives of statutory partners (health, police and schools), the DfE and a representative from Cornwall Council.

The Report highlighted progress made around the eight priority areas identified by OFSTED which were:

·       Services to care leavers;

·       The quality of social work practice, to assess, support and protect children who experience neglect, and the effective use of pre-proceedings;

·       The effectiveness of child protection conference chairs in responding to escalating risks and identifying when progress is not being made for children;

·       Consideration of child protection medicals when children disclose physical abuse or present with injuries;

• Permanence planning for children; 

·       The quality and timeliness of life-story work;

·       The assessment of children looked after placed with parents; and,

·       Strategic oversight and grip on areas for improvement and oversight of senior leaders, including case audits and supervision.

Members discussion points included:

·       The additional challenge of an OFSTED Inadequate judgement given to the Council at same time as responding to the COVID-19 pandemic had caused additional pressures which other council’s did not face;

·       An over dependency on agency workers and the need to develop a stable and able workforce;

·       How to engage with young people when many parts of the county no longer had a youth service;

·       how Scrutiny Members could have confidence in the oversight of information presented to them and how this could be improved to ensure the failings identified did not occur again;

·       Members discussed that questions had been raised previously around care leavers accommodation and were reassured at the time about the position of care leavers; whilst it was understood that senior officers were unaware of the situation, and without having have direct contact with young people themselves, what assurances Members had that improvements were being made?

·       Concerns around engagement with young people – those young people that were willing to speak and engage were often not experiencing difficulties at that time – how could Members be assured that they were hearing from the voices of the most vulnerable?

·       how Members could be directly involved with overseeing children in care through increased transparency and the interrogation of data;

·       how Devon could more effectively report on improved outcomes and how officers measured the efficiency of those outcomes;

·       the need to include examples of best practice from other authorities within reports to allow Members to scrutinise effectively;

·       the Self-Evaluation Framework which would be sent ot Members once available; and,

·       the ambition and long term plan of making Devon an Outstanding authority in Children’s Services.