Council and democracy

Agenda item

Items of Urgent Business

To receive additional items that the Chair is of the opinion should be considered as a matter of urgency, in accordance with Section 100B (4) (b) of the Local Government Act 1972.

Minutes:

The Chair brought forward one item of urgent business, an Ofsted letter which regarded the recent Ofsted visit on Thurrock’s Children’s Services that had been made available a few days prior to the meeting.

 

Before going through the Ofsted letter, the Corporate Director mentioned that the letter was a result of the recent inspection from Ofsted. It had begun from the annual review with Ofsted earlier in the year where Ofsted had suggested a focussed visit with Thurrock’s Children’s Services. The inspection had begun from that point and included an onsite visit for 2 days which had taken place recently.

 

The focus of the inspection was on children in need and those on a child protection plan. Inspectors looked through case records and social workers were asked questions. Further inspection would be required if the service received priority actions which would mean an immediate re-investigation within 3 months, however that was not the case in this inspection.

 

As there was no national set standard for social workers’ caseload, Thurrock’s Children’s Services set their own standards. The Ofsted letter had identified 3 areas that required improvement:

 

1)    The quality and purposefulness of plans and written agreements;

 

2)    Children’s access to advocacy services and opportunities and mechanisms for children to feed back their views and wishes in order to inform practice and service development; and

 

3)    Workload pressures in some teams which was reducing.

 

Referring to the mentioned locally set capacity levels, Councillor Hague queried if there was a framework in place which included benchmarking and assessing what the service actually needed. The Strategic Lead said the threshold was set to 25 children in the assessment teams. The assessment team at the front door would do the initial assessment to identify what support, if any, was required. From this, cases were identified as requiring no further input or could be better supported through other tier services such as prevention support services or longer term solutions. In the last year, the service had restructured areas to ensure control of capacity levels.

 

The Strategic Lead went on to state that an additional team had been created to support and supervise social workers to ensure risks were assessed appropriately. In the family support team, another 6 social workers were in place along with a team manager to manage demand and cases ensuring support for social workers, children were seen and the quality of work. This was being reviewed on a weekly basis. The Strategic Lead also mentioned that in the longer term, the family support services aimed to get to a ‘good’ rating which was currently under review. In the assessment service, the service was looking at 25 children and they were working to 22 children at the family support service which would be the longer term work.

 

Referring to the first bullet point on the last page of the letter, Councillor Okunade expressed concern on the issue on ‘management oversight’ as this had been highlighted by Ofsted on the last visit. She queried what could be done to get the service to overcome this issue. Referring to the same paragraph, she also asked why all social workers were not using the supervision format.

 

The Strategic Lead replied that Ofsted had looked at a case where the manager had said ‘I agree’ to the social worker’s recommendations. However, Ofsted had reported that the service’s quality of supervision had improved over cases. Strengths were recognised and signs of safety supervision forms had been in place since 1 August 2018 which assessed strengths as well as risks in families. Managers were also supported through supervision training to ensure they had the skills to support staff. The service ensured that a manager only supported 5 social workers so they were able to provide a good quality of support and give supervision on a monthly basis. For complex cases, group supervision was used and looked at with a different approach. Over time, the supervision quality had improved particularly in the last couple of years since the last Ofsted inspection.

 

Councillor Okunade queried on when the new case supervision format would be used to which the Strategic Lead answered that it had been in use since 1 August 2018. It would be reviewed through feedback to see what could be improved and would be evaluated in the next 4 weeks.

 

The Parent Governor Representative 1 explained Ofsted visits within her school and queried whether the service felt they were in a position of never achieving a ‘good’ rating as the rating moved with each visit. The Corporate Director explained the Children’s Services framework would differ to a school’s framework. When Ofsted inspected Children’s Services, they would check on their recommendations.

 

The Youth Cabinet Member 2 queried on the number of children outside of care that were offered advocacy services. The Assistant Director explained that looked after children were offered advocacy regularly. There had been no formal separate advocacy for children in need or on child protection plans as they were living at home with families. However, they had allocated social workers who would listen to their views. This had now been changed and the service now provided advocacy for children in need or those on or subject to child protection plans if children wanted it.

 

In response, the Youth Cabinet Member 2 felt this was a serious oversight of the service and questioned why advocacy had not been offered to children in need or on protection plans previously. The Corporate Director answered that there had been an assumption that the parents were the advocates and that it was a delicate issue. The reason being that many parents felt they were the advocates for their children. This was a new area as it had always been the case that immediate advocacy was available for children away from home.

 

Referring to the bottom of the first page of the letter, the Vice Chair sought clarification on whether it was the 2016 or recent visit the paragraph referred to. The Corporate Director confirmed it was the recent visit.

 

Referring to the Parent Governor Representative 1’s earlier comments, the Chair commented that the previous Ofsted visit (2012) at Thurrock’s Children’s Services had received a ‘good’ rating. The last inspection (2016) had been based on a ‘tougher’ framework and Thurrock along with many local authorities had been rated down from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’. However, inspectors had said children were safe which was most important. The Chair went on to ask Officers how the recommendations from the recent Ofsted visit would be implemented into the development plan. The Corporate Director stated the 3 points would be implemented immediately into the body of the development plan.