Agenda item

OFSTED Report of Inspection of Sheffield's Social Care Services - July 2019

Report of the Policy and Improvement Officer

Minutes:

6.1

The Committee received a report regarding the recent Ofsted inspection judgement.

 

 

6.2

In attendance for this item were Councillor Jackie Drayton (Cabinet Member for Children and Families), John Doyle (Director of Business Strategy), who had been Acting Executive Director – People Services at the time of the inspection and Andrew Jones (Head of Primary and Targeted Interventions).

 

6.3

Councillor Jackie Drayton circulated a document which outlined the headline areas for improvement arising from the Ofsted inspection and the progress made to date.

 

6.4

As an introduction, Jackie Drayton gave thanks to all foster carers, adoptive parents and front line staff, and explained that the last inspection in 2013 had rated the service as needing improvement.  However, steady progress had been made since then and the 2019 inspection had rated the service as good.  There were still some areas that needed improvement however and these had been identified by officers in the pre-inspection self-assessment.  The Inspectors had found no further areas for improvement.

 

6.5

John Doyle stated that the report was a good assessment of the service, but the Council could not afford to become complacent.  Children were at the centre of all practises and much had been done to improve over the last couple of years.  The views of children were valued and the Council was supporting them to grow up well supported.  The Council was looking to improve the service further and would continue to challenge itself.

 

6.6

Members of the Committee raised questions and the following responses were provided:-

 

·             The inconsistency of the application of the threshold to step up to children’s social care from early help had arisen in one or two cases where the Council had been trying too hard to keep the children out of care and had not passed the cases to social care early enough.  At no point had children been at risk.  Further training for the Multi Agency Support Team (MAST) had been identified and arranged.

 

·             All children were contacted following a missing episode, but not all of them were contacted within the prescribed timescale.  The Council was working with Sheffield Futures who were responsible for making contact with children who had missing episodes and would consider bringing the service back in-house in the future.  An audit of the service was to be carried out to ensure that the work was carried out in a timely manner.  The policy and procedure was also being reviewed.

 

·             The service had worked hard with Human Resources to make Sheffield attractive when recruiting Social Workers and had developed a package including training, mentoring, possibility of career breaks etc. and a good senior management structure was in place.  However, there were still gaps in some areas and contract workers were used.

 

·             Life story books were now considered for all looked after children.

 

·             Further Teachers had been appointed to the Virtual School and all Personal Education Plans (PEP) were reported to the Child Protection Board.  However, PEP’s needed to be more consistent across local authority areas.  This was to be raised nationally.

 

·             Aspire – a virtual hub worked with foster carers and those on the edge of care to try to keep children with their families wherever possible, with support.

 

·             Operation Fortify was in place to look at the prevention of exploitation of children for criminal activity but the Council was still looking to see if it could do better.

 

·             Recruitment and retention of staff in MAST was an issue.  There was currently a very varied team and staff were encouraged to train to become social workers.

 

·             It was suggested that numbers of young people in care accessing  further education were lower than general population.

 

6.7

RESOLVED: That the Committee:-

 

 

 

(a)     records its thanks to all those involved in the Ofsted Inspection; and

 

 

 

(b)      requests that:-

 

 

 

(i)       a report be submitted to the Committee in six months’ time with an update on the areas for improvement along with progress on maintaining the areas that are good and moving towards outstanding;

 

 

 

(ii)      details of the statutory timescale for conducting a missing child interview and the Council’s performance against it be circulated to Committee Members;

 

 

 

(iii)      statistics of the number of children in care who access and complete higher education courses be circulated to Committee Members;

 

 

 

(iv)     the issue of different PEP processes be raised nationally in the appropriate forum; and

 

 

 

(v)      update reports be submitted to the Committee on the following:-

 

 

 

(A)      an update on the performance with regard to missing children interviews by Sheffield Futures;

 

 

 

(B)      a performance/impact report on Aspire;

 

 

 

(C)     an update on the new process with regard to PEPs and the national conversation; and

 

 

 

(D)     recruitment and retention of staff within MAST (this could be covered in a scheduled report, if available).

 

Supporting documents: