Setting

Jill Colbert OBE Director of Children’s Services Tameside One PO Box 317 Market Place Ashton-under-Lyne Tameside

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Monitoring visit to Tameside children’s services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Tameside children’s services on 13 and 14 February 2025. This was the second monitoring visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in December 2023. His Majesty’s Inspectors for this visit were Lisa Summers, Lisa Walsh and Dawn Parton.

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Areas covered by the visit

Inspectors reviewed the progress made in the response to children in need of help and protection, in particular:

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ The quality of assessments plans and planning.

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ The quality and impact of pre-proceedings interventions.

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ The impact of leaders on social work practice.

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Areas covered by the visit

This visit was carried out in line with the inspection of local authority children's services (ILACS) framework.

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Headline findings

The local authority has not ensured that improvements to the quality of social work for children in need, and those subject to a child protection plan, have been sufficiently prioritised or made at the pace needed to keep children safer and meet their needs. Weaknesses identified at the last inspection continue to be present in Ofsted

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Headline findings

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 1231 Textphone 0161 618 8524 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.gov.uk/ofsted current practice. This includes: poor quality assessments, plans and planning; a lack of purposeful direct work with children; and supervision that is mostly ineffective. As a result, some children experience drift and delay in having their needs understood and met. For some children, risk is not fully understood or robustly responded to, leaving them in situations of ongoing harm. The percentage of initial child protection conferences held within 15 days has seriously declined, leaving some children without the necessary multi-agency safety planning for significant periods of time.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Since the judgement inspection in December 2023, there has been a lack of stable leadership and clear strategic direction, and a fundamental absence of grip on improvement activity. More recently, a new interim chief executive, who took up post in October 2024, is bringing a renewed focus on the improvements needed.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

An experienced director of children’s services has now been appointed and has started in post in January 2025. Recently, more focused work has been done to support a better understanding of service strengths and weaknesses, with external support being provided by an improvement partner. A service restructure is being planned to better align with and support the improvements needed. It is too soon to see what the impact of this planned restructure will be for children.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The quality and impact of social work practice for children in need of help and protection, including disabled children, are highly dependent on the skills and knowledge of the allocated social worker. There is not the necessary infrastructure to enable strong and consistent practice to flourish, such as effective supervision and management direction, effective multi-agency working, and work that is underpinned by child-focused planning. While some social workers are providing solid support that is having a positive impact on children, for most children, there is an absence of proactive practice, and some children’s needs are not fully understood or met.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

There is a serious decline in the timeliness of initial child protection conferences (ICPCs) since the last inspection. Some children wait up to 45 days for the necessary multi-agency child protection planning. This is due to several issues, such as insufficient communication between different teams and delays in the completion of reports. There is also little evidence of safety planning during this period, and senior management oversight of the safety of these children is inconsistent .

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The quality of most assessments continues to be poor. Most lack depth, and analysis is too weak to understand cumulative harm for children in the context of the current concern. Most assessments do not provide evidence of the involvement of professional curiosity, and do not always consider absent fathers. There is too much reliance on parental self-reporting rather than triangulating parents’ reports with information from partners or wider family to fully understand all the risks posed to children. This is limiting the usefulness of assessments to inform resultant plans to meet children’s needs and keep them safer. Most children's plans continue to be overly adult focused, and they do not consider the actions needed to improve children's lives and reduce risk. Most plans rely on parents completing tasks and do not sufficiently consider what is needed to mitigate the harm children have suffered or help keep them safer. There are missed

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Findings and evaluation of progress

opportunities to engage wider family members and social networks, despite these people playing a significant role in children’s lives. Many plans lack clear timescales and contingency planning to support parents’ understanding of what will happen should change not occur.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The management of risks for some children subject to child protection planning is poor. There is little evidence of clear multi-agency safety planning, and most rely on wider family members to keep children safe. Some children experience further incidents of harm while subject to child protection planning. When this occurs, the response to risk is not robust enough to secure children’s immediate and ongoing protection. Children are not seen soon enough following reported incidents of harm, including by the out of hours service. There is not enough professional curiosity demonstrated during subsequent strategy discussions, and there is a distinct absence of safety planning. There is insufficient management grip and oversight for these vulnerable children.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Plans are not always reviewed frequently enough to understand children’s current circumstances in order to swiftly respond to changes in children’s lives. Relevant agencies do not always attend core group meetings or child-in-need reviews, which impacts detrimentally on the pace and progress of planning. Meetings are used to share information and review tasks detailed in the plan. There is an absence of challenge if actions are not progressing, and the impact of the plan on children’s lives is not fully considered to inform next steps. Some meetings are virtual, which could be a barrier to fully engaging with children and their families.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children are not always seen at a frequency in accordance with the level of concern or expected service standards. Most visits still lack purpose, and the direct work which would help social workers understand children’s lives is mostly absent. Some visits are adult focused, and the recording of visits is sometimes too brief to understand their purpose and impact.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Some children continue to experience drift and delay in having their needs met. This is because of a number of changes in social worker, and/or a lack of robust management oversight and case direction to inform any next steps. There are delays in families accessing specific support, such as domestic abuse perpetrator programmes, family group conferences, and support for children’s mental and emotional well-being. Some children step down to lower thresholds of intervention without planned work being completed. For other children, the withdrawal of parental consent following a step down out of child protection, means that they do not get the help they need when they need it. This is contributing to lengthy, episodic statutory interventions.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Some children experience multiple child protection plans, spanning significant periods of their lives, because of similar historical concerns. Critical decisions to remove plans are not always informed by detailed assessments, and reports provided to review child protection conferences are sometimes overly optimistic and focused on compliance rather than impact for children. Task-focused planning is providing a false sense that progress has been made. As a result, some children live in long-term harmful situations and experience periodic statutory interventions without long-term change being secured or timely escalation into the public law outline (PLO).

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Risks to disabled children are not always robustly managed, with decisions not to progress to ICPC based on parental engagement rather than risk of harm. Some social workers continue to have limited training and experience in communicating effectively with disabled children, and this impacts negatively on their ability to build relationships and understand the child’s world.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Many disabled children are benefiting from support to meet their complex needs. Children’s complex health needs are mostly supported through effective child-in-need planning. Review meetings are well attended by specialist health staff, and work is appropriate and targeted. Brothers and sisters of disabled children are helped to access social activities and emotional support.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Letters before proceedings are not good enough in quality. Many lack basic information regarding children and do not consistently articulate the local authority’s concerns, what actions have been taken to mitigate harm or identify what needs to change for children. Social work jargon is frequently used, which makes the content difficult for parents to understand.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Leaders have addressed the legacy issues of children subjected to very lengthy periods in pre-proceedings and are currently focusing on timeliness in decision- making. Since the last inspection, a dedicated PLO team has been established, enabling specialist assessments to be completed more quickly. Some children continue to experience drift and delay because legal gateway review meetings are not sufficiently frequent, and the management challenge offered is not sufficiently robust. As a result, children experience ongoing harm for too long.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The quality of recording on children’s electronic records is inconsistent. Children’s records are not always up to date, or there are missing documents. This hinders an understanding of children’s journeys and the rationale behind the decisions made by the local authority. For some children, the language used in their records is inappropriate or victim blaming. Most supervision of social workers is regular, but this mostly lacks reflection. Managers do not routinely consider the impact of interventions on children or provide direction to guide social workers’ practice. Actions are task focused, and there is an absence of professional challenge of weaker practice, including when progress is not being made to reduce drift and delay.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Quality assurance and performance management mechanisms are underdeveloped. A monthly performance report provides an overview of some areas of social work data. The report is too narrow in its focus, limiting leaders’ oversight of performance across social care. While concerning areas of performance are highlighted, and there is some narrative to explain this, there is insufficient understanding of what this poor performance means for children. Resultant actions are not well targeted to improve children’s experiences or to create the mechanisms to support wider service improvement. The new DCS has started to get a grip of improvement activity and is engaging well with the local authority’s improvement partner.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Although auditing is regular, there is little impact for the child and practitioner, and there is limited learning for the local authority. Auditors are overly process focused, and, as a result, serious weaknesses in practice, such as the management of risk, are not always identified. Moderators provide a sharper focus on children’s experiences, and their evaluations are more accurate. Corrective actions are mostly task and process focused. The approach to auditing is inconsistent. Children are not always spoken to, and when parents are contacted and identify serious concerns, no remedial actions are identified. Social workers are not always fully engaged throughout the audit to help them reflect on their work to shape their current and future practice. Although the vast majority of recent audits are graded inadequate, the subsequent response is not sufficiently robust to address children’s ongoing

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The local authority continues to be highly reliant on agency workers, who account for over half of the staff in the safeguarding teams and a quarter of the staff in the children with disabilities team. The service is focusing on growing their own staff through their social worker academy, which is now supporting 27 social workers in their assisted and supported year. Some of these newly qualified social workers reported improved support to develop their practice. There is much more to do to stabilise the workforce, and a revised service structure is being planned by the new DCS.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Staff describe workloads as manageable, and some reflected on the usefulness of practice weeks, such as a recent session from the police on domestic abuse. There is a culture of uncertainty and some mistrust of senior leaders. Some social workers reflected how the changes in leadership have led to multiple changes in direction. They reported that their heads of service are visible and supportive, and that relationships are improving. Senior leaders are aware that there is significantly more to do to create the right culture for social work to flourish. I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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