Setting

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Ofsted is proud to use recycled paper 1 March 2019

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Ms Wagner Corporate Director, Children and Young People’s Services Wakefield Council County Hall Bond Street Wakefield West Yorkshire WF1 2QW

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Monitoring visit of Wakefield local authority children’s services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Wakefield local authority children’s services on 6 and 7 February 2019. The visit was the first monitoring visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in all areas in July 2018. This visit was carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectors, Lisa Summers and Rachel Holden.

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Monitoring visit of Wakefield local authority children’s services

The local authority is making a start in improving its services for children in care. There are some strengthened foundations to support the improvement needed, from a very low base of inadequacy, and in some areas the local authority recognises it has not made sufficient progress against its improvement plan.

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Areas covered by the visit

During this visit, inspectors reviewed the progress being made in relation to children in care, with a focus on the quality of care planning, management of risk, and the effectiveness of the corporate parenting committee.

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Areas covered by the visit

Inspectors considered a range of evidence, including electronic case records, performance management information, case file audits and other information provided by senior managers. In addition, inspectors spoke to a range of staff, including social workers, managers and other practitioners.

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Overview

Senior managers and leaders have a good understanding of the scale and depth of inadequacies in services for children and young people, and have developed appropriate and comprehensive plans for addressing the areas of improvement identified at the last inspection. Senior leaders have made some reasonable progress in stabilising the service to prevent further deterioration, while maintaining good attention to establishing solid foundations to support whole-service improvement. A stable and suitably experienced senior management team is now in place, which understands well that there is some considerable distance still to travel on the improvement journey.

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Overview

The council is supporting necessary changes through significant financial investment, enabling a rapid expansion in the number of social workers and team managers. Management support for social workers’ learning and oversight of cases are improving. Better quality of recording is supporting improved performance and quality assurance information. Limitations of the current electronic recording system hamper the accuracy and analysis of child level data. Consequently, some of the child level data provided by the local authority for this monitoring visit is inaccurate and does not give sufficient oversight of the service.

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Overview

Senior managers are proactively tackling the legacy of widespread delays in achieving permanence for children through improving children’s planning, review and life-story work, while focusing on improving compliance against statutory requirements and service standards. However, it is too soon to see the impact for children. The response to children at risk of exploitation and when they go missing from care is not effective. Children’s emotional health needs are not being met quickly enough.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The majority of children seen during this visit who have recently come into care have their preferred plan for permanence identified by the four-month child in care review. However, for a small number of children, planning focuses heavily on a single path rather than exploring contingency options at the same time. This has the potential to cause delay. A permanence and resource panel, which has recently been introduced, provides greater consistency of senior management oversight and better tracks children’s progress towards securing permanence.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior managers are well focused on, and are systematically working through, the legacy of inadequate practice. For example, they are seeking to discharge appropriately some care orders for children placed with parents, progressing special guardianship orders, and securing legal orders for some children who have been subject to voluntary arrangements under section 20. These tasks are complex, and it will take time for permanence to be secured for a lot of these children.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior managers and leaders recognise that the current electronic case recording system is not fit for purpose and does not support good social work practice. Work to improve the quality and consistency of recording is being prioritised appropriately, and includes systematic reviews of templates used by social workers. However, there is still a significant amount of work to do to ensure that the tools used by social workers are fit for purpose. For example, agreements that parents sign to allow their children to come into care voluntarily under section 20 are very lengthy and do not inform parents of all their rights. The rapid recruitment of additional social workers and managers and the expansion of social work teams is improving workforce development. Reduced caseloads are enabling more children to be seen regularly by their social workers. More children are now seen alone, and their views, wishes, and feelings are being clearly recorded

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Findings and evaluation of progress

during statutory visits and looked after reviews. Social workers are making better use of observations to understand children and their relationships with parents and significant adults. Some children are starting to benefit from recently recruited children and family workers whose role is to provide direct work to help children understand their histories through life-story work. Some records of visits are well detailed, while others lack clarity about the purpose of the visit or what direct work is being undertaken.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The rapid increase in social work staff means that some parts of the service are heavily reliant on agency social workers and managers, while longer-term recruitment and retention plans are yet to be fully realised.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

All staff told inspectors that they can already see the improvements made by senior managers. They welcome the reducing caseloads and better opportunities to support their development. Social workers spoke highly of senior managers, who are visible and determined about their pursuit of improvement.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The quality of child and family assessments and plans is still weak. Assessments are lengthy and overly descriptive, and they lack clear analysis and understanding of the child’s world and their experiences. Assessments are still not always completed or routinely updated to reflect children’s current circumstances. This means that planning is too frequently based on little or out-of-date information without broader understanding of children’s wider needs.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Work is underway to improve children’s plans. Care plans are often too complex and overly long. They do not clearly identify children’s plans for permanence or how this will be achieved. Children’s unique needs are not well enough understood, and plans do not identify how these will be met. The use of overly professional language means that children and families are not always able to understand or relate to their plan.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

More reviews for children in care are being held in line with statutory requirements. Children are being actively encouraged to attend and participate in their reviews. Meetings are well attended by relevant partners, enabling effective information- sharing to inform care planning. Most children seen at this visit who are of school age have received extra support for maths and English through the virtual school team. Recommendations made are often focused on process rather than on what needs to happen to improve children’s circumstances within the child’s timeframe.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior managers recognise that the response to children at risk of exploitation and those who go missing from care is still poor. A comprehensive action plan appropriately addresses the areas for improvement. Actions are being progressed and monitored. However, it is too soon to see an improved response for these children. Risks to some children are understood and addressed through detailed risk assessments, but in the cases seen during this visit, this does not translate into effective multi-agency planning or interventions to keep children safe or mitigate risk. Some of these children have been placed in unregulated settings that are neither meeting their needs nor keeping them safe. Inspectors highlighted the risks to individual children, and managers are addressing the concerns raised.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children still do not consistently receive return home interviews when they go missing. The local authority performance data shows a decline in the percentage of children accepting these meetings. However, there is insufficient effort to actively engage with young people to understand why they go missing. The low rate of return home interviews means that safeguarding concerns for these children are not known and potential risks are not identified or managed.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children’s basic health needs are still not being met. Despite strategic improvements and investments in children’s emotional well-being services, this is not yet translating into improving health outcomes for children. The local authority reports a reduction in waiting times in accessing specialist services. However, children still experience significant delays. This has led to delays for some children in achieving permanence. Routine health assessments are not always timely. According to the local authority data, the percentage of children who have seen a dentist in the last 12 months is poor, and ‘strengths and difficulties’ questionnaires are not routinely completed to understand children’s emotional health.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Sufficiency remains a challenge. Some progress is being made in improving the number of placement choices available to children. The number of residential placements and local foster homes is increasing. Placement stability has declined for children living in their long-term homes. Where placements are disrupted, placement fragility is not being sufficiently addressed at the earliest opportunity. Disruption meetings do not always take place for children. This means that lessons learned do not inform decisions about future placements for both children and foster carers.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Reductions in the span of managerial responsibility is enabling most social workers to receive more regular supervision, but the quality continues to be an area for improvement. Supervision seen during this visit lacks reflection and does not focus on improving children’s outcomes or provide direction to support more focused care planning. Managers and independent reviewing officers are not consistently challenging poorer practice.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

More reliable and improving performance information and routine auditing are assisting senior managers and leaders to better understand both compliance and the quality of frontline practice. Some areas of compliance in relation to statutory requirements are improving, with more children having up-to-date care plans, statutory visits, and reviews. Although inspectors agreed with the audits seen, management evaluations focus too heavily on compliance. Audit moderators bring a sharper focus on children’s experiences. There is still much work to do to routinely collate the themes from audits to inform learning and strategic developments. It is expected that this will be a function of the very recently established quality and learning service.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The corporate parenting function has recently been strengthened. Attention has been paid to facilitate a deeper understanding of children in care services of elected members through specific training and briefings. Service area champions now oversee specific areas of need, enabling more recent robust questioning and challenge. The corporate parenting committee is engaged with partners and the children in care council and have carried out visits to all children’s residential settings and have participated in numerous children’s activities. Members have a good understanding of the areas in need of improvement and have laid good foundations for supporting this.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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