Setting

Summary report for children and young people

The purpose of the inspection is to look at how well the council and other organisations help and protect children and young people to be safe from harm and to be well cared for.

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Summary report for children and young people

Overall we rated the London Borough of Redbridge as good for how effective child protection services are. All of our grades are explained in the table below:

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Summary report for children and young people

Outstanding A service that is significantly better than required at keeping children and young people safe Good A service that is better than required at keeping children and young people safe Adequate A service that is doing what is required to keep children and young people safe Inadequate A service that is not doing what is required to keep children and young people safe

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Summary report for children and young people

Here is a summary of the things we found at the inspection that were generally adequate or good and the things we told the Director:

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Summary report for children and young people

The people who run the London Borough of Redbridge want to make sure that those children and young people who live in their area are protected. They have employed more people to make sure they know which children need to be protected and that they are safe. They want to make sure life is better for them.

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Summary report for children and young people

When people contact children’s services because they are worried about a child, the child and their family get help straight away from social workers and the many other services who work with children, young people and their parents and carers. When social workers are particularly worried about how safe children are, they work very closely with the police to decide the best way to sort things out.

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Summary report for children and young people

Parents told inspectors that the people in charge of meetings about children were very good at their job and clearly explained all the help and choices that were available to them and what would happen next if things didn’t improve. Social workers have enough time to get to know children and their families well and to help them stop problems from getting worse and actually make things better.

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Summary report for children and young people

When children need to talk to social workers about how they feel, they are seen alone if children want to see them alone. When they speak to social workers their views and feelings are used to help social workers to work out a plan. Most of these plans are good and help parents and children to understand what they need to do to make things better.

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Summary report for children and young people

If families need help at night or at weekends, it is available through an emergency duty team who will act quickly, then make sure that the social workers who work during the day get all the information they need to carry on helping.

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Summary report for children and young people

Here is a summary of the things we found at the inspection that needed improving and the things we told the Director:

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Summary report for children and young people

The council needs to give more thought to how it considers cases where young people go missing from home and are at great risk of being exploited by groups of adults. The council needs to sort this out within three months.

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Summary report for children and young people

Social workers need to ensure that information about race and culture is clearly written about in the plans that they make to help improve a child or young person’s life. The council needs to sort this out within three months.

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Summary report for children and young people

The quality of assessments written by social workers needs to be better sometimes when they are considering those things which either make children safe or place them at risk of harm. The council needs to sort this out within three months.

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Summary report for children and young people

The council’s intensive support team is going to offer even more help to young people to prevent them from coming into care and it needs to have a plan to show how this will work and how it will know it is successful. The council needs to sort this out within three months.

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Summary report for children and young people

If children and young people want to be supported by someone at meetings to discuss their safety, the council need to make sure that they know how to get this help. The council needs to sort this out within six months.

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Summary report for children and young people

The council needs to contact greater numbers of parents and carers who make a private arrangement to care for children outside of their family, to make sure these children are safe and well cared for. The council needs to sort this out within six months.

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Summary report for children and young people

When the council has been successful in improving the help they offer, they need to get better at letting their staff know what has changed for the better.

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Summary report for children and young people

The full inspection report was published on 16 November 2012. The council will now prepare a plan to show how they will improve things. It will also say when they are going to talk to children and young people about what they are going to do and which groups they are going to talk to.

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Summary report for children and young people

If you would like to look at the full inspection report you can find this at

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Summary report for children and young people

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/local-authorities/redbridge

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