Setting

Catherine Driscoll Corporate Director of Children’s Services Swindon Borough Council Euclid Street Swindon SN1 2JH

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Monitoring visit to Swindon Borough Council children’s services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Swindon Borough Council children’s services on 3 to 4 June 2025. This was the fourth monitoring visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in July 2023. His Majesty’s Inspectors for this visit were Nick Bennison and Joy Howick.

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Areas covered by the visit

Inspectors reviewed the progress made in the quality and impact of services for children in care. Inspectors had a particular focus on the following areas of improvement identified at the last inspection:

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ The number and range of foster homes and children’s homes and other placements the local authority has available, to help ensure that children live in stable homes that are well matched to their needs.

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ How quickly children achieve permanence.

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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

Since the time of the last inspection, political, corporate and children’s services senior leaders have had a continuing focus on the quality of support and services provided to children in care. An increasing number of children in care are now living in long- term homes, and children are waiting less time to achieve permanency with their carers. While this is positive progress, the pace of improvement around the sufficiency of placements is slow and many children in care are living out of area and at a considerable distance from their home. It is too early to see the impact of the recently revised corporate parenting board, and the views of children in care are not being used to well enough to influence and shape support and services. Children 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 care are not all receiving the same quality or level of support from social workers, and this is impacting on some children’s experiences.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The strength of political and corporate support for children services in Swindon is strong. The lead member of the council and chief executive are keen advocates for children in care, and active members of the corporate parenting board and children’s services improvement board. They have provided consistent direction and momentum to the improvement journey during periods of change in the children’s services senior leadership team. Since the last monitoring visit in 2024, a new interim head of service has brought a renewed focus and energy to the improvement journey. Following the recent departure of the Director of Children’s Services (DCS), a new and experienced interim DCS has recently taken up post. They are keen to take stock of the improvement journey so far, and to identify key priorities as soon as possible to ensure children get the right help and support.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The council has invested in strategic management capacity across children’s services to enable operational managers to focus much more on frontline practice. This is starting to make a positive difference for frontline practice, and in turn, children in care. While many children now come into care at the right time in Swindon, a small number of children have waited too long, and in situations of harm and neglect, before coming into care.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

An increasing number of children in care are settled and making progress. They are visited regularly by social workers who build trusted relationships with them. Their wishes and feelings are listened to, and some children’s voices are directly influencing their care plans. While social workers regularly involve children in direct work, the purpose and quality of this work, and its impact for children, is too variable. For some children, their case records are muddled and disjointed, and the quality of previous recording is poor. It is difficult for some social workers to fully understand the child’s past experiences based on their records. More importantly, it will be difficult for these children to understand their care experiences if they come to read their records later in life.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Pre-birth assessments are of good quality and completed in a timely way. However, some children in care are not benefiting from having an up-to-date needs assessment or care plan that sets out the right actions to help them to make progress in their lives. This makes it more difficult for social workers, and other professionals, to measure the progress of the child’s care plan, or to ensure that any new needs are being adequately met for the child. For some children, there is little contingency planning within their care plans to help social workers know what to do, and what the best alternative care arrangements are if they need to move quickly. Planning is too reactionary for these children, when their circumstances change.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

An increasing number of children in care are achieving permanence, with their long- term carers, in a timelier way. This is much improved since the time of the last inspection and is helping children to feel more settled in care. Senior managers have oversight of care plans for most children in care, including unborn babies, and while plans are regularly reviewed, for a small number of children, changes in social worker are causing drift and delay in permanence being achieved at the earliest opportunity.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most children in care are helped by their carers, and social workers, to be healthy. Their physical health needs are reviewed regularly and their emotional health needs are well met through a range of services. Children in care are also able to access therapeutic life-story work that sensitively supports them to understand their childhood experiences. Since the last monitoring visit, the health offer for children has been enhanced by the creation of a new service to support children and their carers. However, for some children living outside of Swindon, there can be delays in them accessing specialist mental health provision.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Children in care enjoy taking part in a wide range of social activities that support their self-confidence and friendships. Most children are well supported in school and receive timely and targeted support when needed. Their Personal Education Plans are regularly reviewed to measure their progress and to identify any further support that they may need.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most social workers quickly identify risks for children in care and take timely action to mitigate and reduce risks. When children go missing from care, social workers take swift action to respond, understand and reduce risk. There is robust management oversight of missing episodes for children and social workers use conversations with children to understand the reasons why they are going missing. Social workers use this information to inform and create safety plans that, for most children, effectively reduce risk.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most children in care are well supported by social workers, advocates and Quality Assurance Reviewing Officers (QAROs) to participate in their looked-after children review. Recommendations from the review are clear and timebound, and children receive sensitively written letters from QAROs following the review. Outside of the review process, while advocates routinely follow up the requests made by children, QAROs are not routinely monitoring the pace and progress of the child’s care plan in- between reviews to ensure actions are being achieved in a timely way.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Many children in care are placed at a considerable distance from their home due to a shortage in local placements. This impacts on their emotional well-being, education, social networks and the time they spend with family, friends and others who are important to them. While some progress has been made through the local authority’s sufficiency strategy to increase in the number of foster placements, more local foster carers are still needed. The local authority plans to open two children’s homes, but these are at a very early stage and are not having an impact for children. Senior leaders are cognisant of this and acknowledge that there is still much more to do to meet their sufficiency duty.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

A very small number of children live in unregistered children’s homes. Senior managers have robust oversight of these arrangements in order to ensure that the child’s needs are understood during this time. The local authority works with providers so that they register the accommodation. When this is not possible, the search for alternative provision continues to ensure that children can move quickly to more appropriate accommodation. This ensures that children living in these placements is very time limited.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior managers are visible to the workforce. The impact of changes to the senior leadership team and change of director of children’s services have been managed well and workforce culture is strong. Social workers feel involved in the improvement journey and report that they find regular staff briefings about changes very helpful.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior leaders have recently welcomed the outcome of a peer review of the effectiveness of the corporate parenting board. The recommendations of the review are now being progressed. The membership of the board has been revised to include children, political members and representatives from varying corporate services. The board is now beginning to provide better scrutiny of key performance areas and service developments for children in care. A review of children’s participation groups has also taken place to help increase the number of children involved in participation activities. Senior leaders acknowledge there is more to do to ensure that children in care are more actively involved in helping to shape the role of council as a corporate parent.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior leaders know their services well. Regular quality assurance activity and a suite of accurate performance management information are providing senior leaders with a good oversight of the impact of social work practice for children in care. This means that they understand the areas of strength and those that need greater support across the service. Social workers are now receiving regular individual performance data, which is helping them to focus on their own performance and to understand the impact of their practice on children and the wider organisation. While auditing activity is helping senior leaders to identify areas of improving practice and where practice still needs to be developed, social workers are not consistently involved in this process, and feedback from children and families is not consistently sought.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Management oversight of frontline practice and staff supervision is regular but varies in quality. While most staff supervisions include timebound actions for social workers to complete, social workers do not always receive the help and guidance they need from managers to respond to potential difficulties or drift in progressing the child’s care plan. Supervision is not always effective in tackling the root causes of issues that are impacting on progress being made.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most social workers are positive about working in Swindon. They have access to a wide range of training that supports them in their role. Staff morale is high, and social workers are now positively focusing on the children they are working with, rather than the changes they are experiencing within children’s service.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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