Ofsted report expected into Solihull children's services
Solihull Council will set out how it will improve services following the report.
Last updated 13th Jan 2023
An Ofsted report into Solihull’s turbulent children’s services is due to be published today (Jan 13).
It's after an inspection took place in November last year and comes as the department’s new director reveals the number of children in care within the borough has doubled over the last 10-12 years.
Pete Campbell, who was appointed as the new Director of Children’s Services in October 2022, said the increase in demand has put some pressure on the council’s finances.
During a council meeting last week, Mr Campbell gave a speech on how the department intends to improve outcomes for children in the Solihull Plan. He said the next steps will depend on the findings of Ofsted’s report.
Mr Campbell said: “A huge amount of information has come into children’s services that has required us at the improving outcomes board to recognise there are urgent improvements in children’s social care, what we are calling single-agency issues, and there are urgent matters that are multi-agency.
“There will be a children’s social care plan as a result of the Ofsted findings. That has to satisfy them that it captures what they’ve found and what they need to see change.
“Similarly, the multi-agency plan has been informed by some of those earlier contributions in 2022 and will be overseen by the local safeguarding children’s partnership. Children’s social care will be very much involved with both, but one is entirely within children’s social care.”
Mr Campbell was appointed director of children’s services in the wake of a damning letter from MPs to Education Secretary Kit Malthouse in September.
MPs wrote they were ‘extremely concerned’ about the leadership of Solihull Council chief executive Nick Page and found the council’s reassurances after the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes as ‘inadequate’.
A government intervention announced in November last year saw the department receive an urgent £642,402 grant. Mr Malthouse has also sent Sir Alan Wood, former director for children’s services in the London borough of Hackney, to work with the council.
Mr Campbell continued: “The Ofsted report gets published a week tomorrow and there will be a recommendation from Sir Alan Wood about how children’s services should be delivered in Solihull. So the next couple of months it’s all quite sensitive as it’s not just our hands on the steering wheel.”
He added that it could take up to 18 months to deliver a new model in children’s services, should Sir Alan Wood recommend one.