'Inadequate' children's services improving - Ofsted

Improvements have been made to a council's under-fire children's services department after being told it was failing but there remains "more to do", inspectors have said.

Halton Borough Council's children's services department was rated "inadequate" in all four areas of its inspection by Ofsted in May last year.

It was criticised for a lack of "stable and effective leadership" and "workforce instability", with a government inspector being sent in to help turn things around and a new department head was also installed.

Ofsted has now published the results of a a two-day monitoring visit in April which found "strong political and corporate support" and "significant additional investment" was supporting progress towards improvement.

In a letter to head of department Zoe Fearon published online, Ofsted said: "There is a refreshed recruitment strategy and more social workers have become permanent.

"Social workers have been provided with a wide range of training. The learning from training is supporting social workers to consolidate, refresh and develop their practice. This training is starting to impact positively on children's experiences."

However, the letter said that for some children, what it called "inconsistent management oversight" was not supporting timely decision making.

It continued: "There is more to do to ensure that children's individual needs inform the social work response. There is not a consistently effective response to children living in private fostering arrangements."

In specific relation to fostering arrangements, the headline findings said for some children, there were "delays" in the initiation of private fostering assessments and the completion of full statutory checks, which "created uncertainty" about the safety and suitability of each fostering arrangement.

The inspection took in a range of evidence, including electronic records, performance management information, case file audits and other information provided by senior managers and staff, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Their report added: "Once arrangements are approved, not all children receive the appropriate levels of management oversight.

"This means that any emerging needs and risk may not be responded to in a timely and effective way. There is more to do to raise awareness of private fostering and embed more consistent practice."

The council has relied on significant numbers of temp agency social workers in the past, which had also resulted in large overspends due to the increased costs.

But the report said there had been increasing stability in the workforce as well as training which had led to more purposeful "direct work" with children and families.

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