Setting

Lara Patel Executive Director Children’s Services Directorate Reading Borough Council Civic Offices Bridge Street Reading RG1 2LU

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Monitoring visit to Reading Children’s Services

This letter summarises the findings of the monitoring visit to Reading Children’s Services on 25 and 26 March 2026. This was the second monitoring visit since the Joint Targeted Area Inspection (JTAI) in March 2025, which identified significant weaknesses in the multi-agency approach to prevention, help and support for children and families who are victims of domestic abuse in Reading. His Majesty’s Inspectors for this visit were Amanda Maxwell and Steve Bailey.

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Areas covered by the visit

Inspectors reviewed the experience and progress of care leavers and paid particular attention to the following areas:

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ the experience and progress of care leavers aged 18 to 25

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ quality and suitability of accommodation and employment, education and training

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ care leavers at risk of specific types of abuse or exploitation

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ disabled care leavers and those with specific physical or mental health needs, including those who misuse alcohol or drugs

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Areas covered by the visit

◼ care leavers with specific needs (for example, unaccompanied asylum seekers, young parents, or those who have had contact with the criminal justice system)

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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 majority of Reading’s care leavers receive effective support; however, not all services are consistently strong. There is more to do to ensure the consistent 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 effectiveness of support for particular groups of care leavers, including those with more complex needs.

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Headline findings

The local authority’s leaders have continued to be focused on practice improvement. They have been persistent in taking actions and implementing interventions to support improvement to help them to reach their aspired outcomes for children, young people and families, in line with their service wide improvement plan. Much of this improvement has, to date, been focused on services from the local authority’s ‘front door’ through to child protection planning and wider systemic improvement, although leaders are aware of the need to further strengthen support for care leavers. Senior leaders are also very aware of the government’s children’s social care reform agenda and expectations and are incorporating these in their local authority and wider partnership service development.

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Headline findings

Senior leaders acknowledge that there is more to do to fully implement and embed the changes being made and to consistently achieve the quality and impact for which they are aiming. They are well sighted on the specific areas that require the greatest continued focus and attention: the stability, experience and skills of the workforce to ensure they are equipped for their roles; the implementation of the quality assurance framework throughout the service; and the application of their chosen model of social work practice.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Personal Advisers (PAs) establish relationships with young people in good time before the child becomes an adult or leaves care. This positively supports young people, who develop relationships of trust with their PAs. PAs have thorough knowledge and understanding about their young people's needs, histories, challenges and aspirations. Care leavers who inspectors met said their PAs are there when they need them and they help them. PAs provide practical help and support to care leavers when they seek it or look to them at times of challenge or crisis.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Care leavers are actively involved in the corporate parenting panel. Their contributions have a positive influence on decision-making which affects them. All care leavers are encouraged and supported to be involved in key decision-making which affects them, especially in the creation and review of their plans.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most PAs are regularly in touch with their care leavers. Care leavers that live closer to Reading benefit from the local drop-in service, groups and forums. Care leavers who live further away are seen in line with expected visiting frequencies, but for some more vulnerable and isolated young people, this is not sufficient.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

A large majority of care leavers live in of homes that meet their needs. Some care leavers benefit from remaining with their foster carers into adulthood. Others live in semi-supported accommodation with effective varying levels of support to assist them. Others have been supported to move into their own homes and are maintaining tenancies. The housing department typically work effectively with children’s social care. This ensures that the urgent need for housing is explored and addressed swiftly for almost all young people. There has been an increase in the number of care leavers needing housing in Reading and this number has grown faster than the allocated housing quota for care leavers. This means that, although, appropriate accommodation is identified in a timely way for most care leavers, a small but increasing number are waiting for long periods before being able to move into appropriate accommodation.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

PAs support care leavers well to address their physical and emotional health needs, while advocating for them. They support care leavers to attend appointments and navigate the challenges they may experience in accessing appropriate health care support. For a few young people with more complex and chronic needs, the response they receive from the local authority and its partner agencies is insufficiently collaborative and collective and so not as effective as it could be. On occasions, senior leaders have intervened directly to ensure such young people’s needs are met.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

All care leavers are supported and encouraged to be in employment, education and or training (EET). PAs are persistent in re-visiting care leavers interests, aspirations and wishes, while also supporting them to be engaged in social and leisure activities. Senior leaders are ambitious for their care leavers, and they have developed new initiatives to assist and support care leavers, when they experience barriers to EET. At this early stage, this activity is not currently having the desired effect and the numbers of care leavers not in EET has risen. Since September 2025, the virtual school has offered personal education plans to care leavers, the initial uptake of which is promising. There has been a small increase in the overall number of apprenticeships available to care leavers, although take up remains low. This increase in availability shows tenacity on the part of the local authority in learning

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Findings and evaluation of progress

from previous experiences, and leaders are aware that more needs to be done to help young people to be apprenticeship ready.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

The local offer for care leavers has been updated and enhanced since the inspection in 2024. For example, care leavers can now access assistance and financial support with some medical expenses and leisure activities. Senior leaders recognise that more is needed to ensure the offer it is up to date, easy to use and easily accessible for all care leavers.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most care leavers pathway plans are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect their current circumstances and needs. The quality of these plans is variable; most are created and reviewed with, and alongside, young people, as their voice and views are present in these plans. For a small number of care leavers, who have more varied or complex needs and vulnerabilities, their plans do not sufficiently explore this and detail how these needs will be met or risk and vulnerability minimised.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Care leavers who are parents, or expectant parents, benefit from enduring relationships with their PAs, who provide consistent support. Such long-term trusted relationships mean that emotional support through pregnancy is informed by care leavers’ histories and is truly nurturing. Timely referrals to charities and the persistent 'checking in' on care leavers ensures they can access and take up midwifery, early help and other forms of community-based support in early parenthood.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Care experienced young people, who are in custody, and who have remained open to the service, have varying experiences of the support they receive. In stronger examples, PAs are in regular contact with young people, supporting them to think about their lives back in their communities, while also working collaboratively with others to develop reintegration plans. For a few care leavers in custody, they have not benefitted from this support. For others, decisions were made to close involvement with them without consultation with them or appropriate consideration of their longer term and reintegration needs. Leaders identified this weakness just prior to the visit and have taken swift and immediate remedial action to re-establish contact.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Most disabled young people and those with special educational needs receive individualised effective care and support from their PAs and carers. The education, health and care (EHC) plans for some disabled care leavers have lapsed. It is not clear why this has occurred and what meaningful activity, or support with education, employment or training, has replaced this. PAs continue to involve and use the various services available to young people, but for those who require more bespoke support, the absence of an EHC plan, is a contributing factor for when they are not in EET.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Senior leaders plan to implement an all-age approach that will assist in the identification, assessment and intervention response to reduce the risk of extra familial harm. Currently care leavers do not yet receive a bespoke multi-agency response to these risks in the way that the local authority and its partner agencies already have in place for those under 18 years old.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

PAs caseloads are greater than senior leaders would like. The current high workloads mean that, while statutory visiting requirements are met, for some more tailored and proactive visiting arrangements are not in place, including for especially vulnerable care leavers whose needs are more dynamic.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Supervision and management oversight has improved but more is needed to ensure it is routinely of good quality, explorative and reflective for all PAs.

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Findings and evaluation of progress

Leaders have been focused on improving their quality assurance and auditing arrangements. They have taken a phased approach to implementing more appropriate tools with an intentional focus on collaborative practitioner learning. Presently, these changes have not yet been applied in the care leavers service. As a result, current audits in this specific service area miss the opportunity to strengthen practice or celebrate examples of effective relational support. I am copying this letter to the Department for Education.

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