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 Rutland as adequate 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

Children are safe and the arrangements for child protection work well to make sure those children who are most at risk of being harmed have good support to keep them safe.

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Summary report for children and young people

The meetings for children who need protecting work well and the right people who know the children best attend to discuss how to make children’s lives safer. Children and their parents are well supported to attend their meetings or put their views in other ways.

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Summary report for children and young people

Social workers and support workers make sure they speak with children regularly and see them alone, so children have chances to say how they feel and what they think should happen about their situations.

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Summary report for children and young people

Social workers care about their work and feel they are supported well to help children and families. They can regularly meet and talk to their managers and attend training to improve their skills.

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Summary report for children and young people

The local authority is well led and the leaders and managers work hard at making improvements by taking any learning from areas such as complaints, inspections and keeping in touch with other local authorities to share ideas.

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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

Sometimes children and families who need the help of services are not offered this help early enough and there are delays in the services organising how best to help. This means problems children and families have may get worse before they get help.

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Summary report for children and young people

The local authority could do more to check that disabled children are safe.

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Summary report for children and young people

When children’s situations change and they may need less or more help there needs to be clearer planning to make sure children always get the support that is right for them.

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Summary report for children and young people

Rutland need to make sure they carry out full checks on all areas of practice and how services perform to make sure they continue to improve the services that children and families receive.

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Summary report for children and young people

There needs to be more opportunities for children and families to share their views and experiences, particularly in child protection, and for Rutland to use this information to improve services.

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Summary report for children and young people

The full inspection report was published on 15 February 2013. 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/rutland

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