Setting

Julian Wooster Interim Director of Children and Young People’s Futures Devon County Council County Hall Topsham Road Exeter EX2 4QD

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Monitoring visit to Devon children’s services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Devon children’s services on 4 and 5 November 2025. This was the first monitoring visit since the local authority was again judged inadequate in January 2025. Devon have had six previous monitoring visits due to their inadequate judgement in January 2020. His Majesty’s Inspectors for this visit were Tom Anthony and Andy Whippey.

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Areas covered by the visit

Inspectors reviewed the progress made in the quality and impact of services for care leavers, with a particular focus on the following areas of concern identified at the last inspection:

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ The availability of support and sufficient suitable local homes to meet the needs of children in care and care leavers. ◼ The assessment of risk and safety planning for care leavers.

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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

Political, corporate and operational leaders in Devon share a determination to improve services to care leavers (known in Devon as care-experienced people). They are overseeing a much-needed programme of improvements across children’s services. Leaders take their responsibilities as corporate parents seriously. They know that some care leavers have been let down, and were not provided with the support, protection and services they needed as children.

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Headline findings

The quality of accommodation and the range and impact of support provided to care leavers in Devon have improved since the last judgement inspection in January 2025. Leaders know that secure suitable homes are fundamental for young people to make 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 progress in their lives. A range of recent developments are beginning to redress the long-standing failures to provide care leavers in Devon with suitable accommodation.

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Headline findings

At the time of this visit, no care leavers were placed in bed and breakfast accommodation. The partnership in Devon has more work to do to continue to increase the availability of suitable move-on accommodation, appropriate accessible health services as well as employment, training and education opportunities. More work is also required to continue to improve the timeliness, recording and quality of risk assessments, multi-agency safety plans and Pathway Plans.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

At the last judgement inspection in January 2025, some care leavers were found to have experienced multiple moves between a variety of unsuitable temporary living arrangements.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Since then, the appointment of dedicated housing advisers has helped build relationships with district housing officers as well as other providers. This means that care leavers and their personal advisers (PAs) receive help to identify options and access suitable housing. When there are delays in housing provision at a local district level, leaders act, including providing rent guarantees and identifying private rental accommodation to improve the quality of housing provided.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The number of care leavers living in unsuitable accommodation, including a small number who are in custody, has continued to reduce since the last inspection. Senior management oversight of this small cohort has been enhanced. This has contributed to an increase in the numbers who are successfully moving into social housing.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

There is now greater clarity about the pathways available to support care leavers into their own accommodation. The recent development of additional ‘staying close’ provision, continued use of ‘staying put’ arrangements as well as a deposit guarantor scheme are all helping to provide access to suitable accommodation.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

A concerted focus on support to vulnerable care leavers means greater efforts are being made to provide ongoing support to those in custody. When there are difficulties visiting care leavers, staff escalate this issue, and senior leaders correspond with prison governors and visits are then made available. These young people benefit from good co-ordination and planning with prison offender management (POM) staff as well as probation officers, helping PAs to establish plans to support care leavers in custody and on their release.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Plans to support children in care as they approach 18 are now scrutinised at a Pathway Planning Forum, where arrangements to achieve suitable accommodation are rightly seen as a priority. Leaders have created several panels to enhance management oversight of individual plans. These include the housing-focused Suitable Accommodation and Move-on panels, which are used to quality assure plans and provide direction that helps care leavers.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The recruitment of additional specialist education, training and employment (ETE) PAs, as well as therapeutic well-being practitioners, is making a difference and improving the quality of the support provided to care leavers in Devon.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Pathway Plans are co-created and based on care leavers’ views and aspirations. This helps ensure that effort and resources are directed toward the outcomes that care leavers want. Some Pathway Plans, however, are too brief and need more detail on the specific needs.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Reflecting the fact that too many care leavers in Devon have not been in education, employment or training (EET), there is an increased focus on improving EET opportunities across the county.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Interventions from the ETE specialist PAs positively impact young people, helping to promote and encourage them to access EET activity. Increasing numbers of care- experienced people now go on to university, but not all care leavers are receiving enough support to engage in constructive activities or find something that they are interested in.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Care leavers in Devon are getting a more consistent service. They have strong relationships with PAs, who understand care leavers’ needs and aspirations and celebrate their achievements. Care leavers are supported by tenacious PAs, who are committed to their welfare and visit them regularly and in line with their needs. This includes visits during the evenings and weekends when this is needed.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

PAs are alert to current and emerging risks for their care leavers. Risks, vulnerabilities and exploitation concerns in all formats are well identified. For most care leavers, action is taken to ensure that appropriate support and interventions are in place to support risk reduction. Safety planning for care leavers identified as being at high risk of exploitation is enhanced by oversight and tracking from a specialist team, and plans made to keep care leavers safer contain clear recommendations relevant to their individual vulnerabilities.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

For some care leavers, however, there are delays in delivering agreed actions and in ensuring that up-to-date multi-agency plans are created. Pathway Plans are also not always updated when the level of risk or need increases. This means there is not always an up-to-date and accurate understanding and record of vulnerable care leavers’ circumstances and the plans in place to improve their safety.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior leaders in Devon have a realistic and well-informed understanding of the quality and impact of the support that is provided. Quality assurance and audit practices in Devon are well constructed. They provide managers and leaders with a good line of sight to frontline practice. A sensible and collaborative practice evaluation framework directs audit activity to the things that matter most. This helps identify areas for practice improvement both for individual young people as well as at a strategic level. Care-experienced people benefit because recommendations to improve their support, identified in audits, are tracked in subsequent supervision sessions. At present, audit activity does not consistently capture the views of care leavers and other relevant people. This is a missed opportunity to fully understand and learn from the experiences of care leavers.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Inspectors met with a group of care leavers who are part of an increasing number who have apprenticeship opportunities within Devon County Council. Care leavers spoke with enthusiasm about improvements across the service as well as their access and engagement with senior leaders, including the Chief Executive. They value these opportunities and are passionate about their ongoing work to help to improve the service that is provided.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Care leavers have helped refresh the Local Offer for Care Leavers. This is now a detailed and comprehensive offer that sets out the entitlement to an extensive range of support regardless of where young people live.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The workforce supporting care leavers is increasingly stable and permanent. Staff welcome leaders’ high expectations and ambitions to improve the experiences and support provided to care leavers. PAs hold manageable caseloads, receive appropriate training and value their easy access to managers and leaders.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Individual and group supervision is regular. However, at present, records do not consistently provide evidence of rigorous analysis and reflection within supervision. Leaders intend to improve supervsion and Pathway Plan templates once children’s records have migrated onto a new database for both children’s and adults’ services being introduced in 2026.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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