Setting

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 1231 Textphone 0161 618 8524 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.gov.uk/ofsted

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John Gregg Peterborough Sand Martin House Bittern Way Fletton Quays Peterborough PE2 8TY

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Monitoring visit to Peterborough children’s services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Peterborough children’s services on 29 and 30 April 2025. This was the third monitoring visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in January 2024. His Majesty’s inspectors for this visit were Nicki Shaw and Naintara Khosla.

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Areas covered by the visit

During this visit, inspectors reviewed the family safeguarding service. Inspectors had a particular focus on the following areas:

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ Children subject to a child protection plan, children in need and children subject to the pre-proceedings stage of the Public Law Outline (PLO). ◼ The effectiveness of supervision and quality assurance.

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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

Senior leaders in Peterborough are highly ambitious for children and are informed by an accurate and detailed self-evaluation of the current effectiveness of services to support children in need of help and protection. The director of children’s services and his permanent leadership team have a good understanding of current performance and are already addressing the areas for improvement identified at this visit.

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Headline findings

The director of children’s services continues to drive improvement with pace and is supported by the chief executive officer and corporate and political leaders. Children are recognised as a corporate priority following the refresh of the Peterborough’s corporate plan in April 2025. There is still much to do and an ongoing need for corporate and partnership support and investment to improve the lives of Peterborough’s most vulnerable children.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children, including disabled children, benefit from social workers who know them well. Social workers have developed and sustained positive relationships with children and families, and this provides continuity and helps enable positive change.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Conversations and direct work are undertaken by social workers who spend time with children to understand their wishes and feelings and their lived experience. Where relevant, pictorial communication tools are used effectively to engage disabled children. This is helping to ensure that children’s views are captured in assessments and influences their plans. Most children’s needs arising from their identity are known and understood by social workers.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children benefit from effective intervention and support, provided by experienced and knowledgeable child practitioners. This is helping parents to develop their parenting skills, gain confidence in the parenting task and respond to their children’s needs appropriately.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

A range of services are available to support children and their families, depending on their specific needs. This includes independent domestic violence adviser (IDVA) services for victims of domestic abuse and support for parents where substance misuse is a concern.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most children receive help and support at the right level. When risks to children escalate because of parental mental health concerns, domestic abuse or substance misuse, there is a timely and proportionate response. For some children, specialist assessments are appropriately commissioned to understand their needs and to inform plans. However, some assessments are not commissioned until children enter pre- proceedings. This means that children experience some delay while waiting for the outcome of specialist assessments to inform their plans.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

For a small number of children for whom sexual abuse is a risk, the need for specialist assessments is not identified or commissioned. This impacts social workers’ assessment of parental protective abilities, decision-making and effective planning for children. Where children are living in neglectful environments, appropriate tools can be used to inform assessments, but this is not consistent practice.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children’s plans are reviewed at regular multi-agency meetings; however, health professionals are not always present or do not always contribute to the meeting by providing reports to update professionals about children’s health needs. This impacts effective information-sharing and ongoing risk analysis and means that subsequent planning for children is not always informed by up-to-date health information. For some children where neglect is a vulnerability, they wait too long for health assessments to be completed. For a minority of children, assessments and plans are not reviewed effectively. Changes in circumstances and reductions in levels of risk are not made sufficiently clear. Key agencies are not always included in planning for children, particularly housing agencies when there are concerns about children’s living environment or when families are at risk of eviction. For a small number of children in need, their

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Findings and evaluation of progress

plans are unclear and are sometimes based on over-optimistic expectations of parents. The recording of these plans does not always make clear who is doing what and by when. This means that parents may not be able to easily understand if they are doing what is expected of them to safeguard their children in a timely enough way. Where there is an improvement in outcomes for children, parents and professionals cannot always clearly recognise that progress has been made. This can be discouraging for parents.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

When children’s cases are moved between teams, they benefit from thoughtful handovers so that families feel their new social workers understand their needs and their progress.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Leaders recognise that the pre-proceedings work in the PLO requires further development. Leaders have a clear strategic plan to address the shortfalls identified and improve the quality of information used to track this work, so that children’s and families’ progress can be effectively monitored and reviewed. When children are subject to PLO, better planning ensures that there are permanency considerations for them at the earliest opportunity. When risks to children are not reducing, appropriate court orders are sought to safeguard and secure stability for them.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most, but not all, social workers receive regular supervision that helps to progress children’s plans. When supervision is impactful, risks to children are analysed and their progress is monitored and reviewed. Most social workers have manageable caseloads but for some they are too high, and this is impacting on the quality of children’s case recording.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Performance data and quality assurance activity are providing leaders with a detailed understanding of practice quality. This detailed understanding is enabling more targeted improvement activity. The collaborative practice evaluation tool is comprehensive and helps to evaluate practice at key stages of intervention with children and families. A small proportion of the audits are moderated, and this process supports the efficacy and quality of audit practice and promotes a shared understanding of what good practice looks like. Moderation also provides an additional layer of scrutiny to practice and assurances for leaders.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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