No real improvements in North East Lincolnshire Children's Services
In a recent monitoring visit, Ofsted - who had rated the service 'inadequate' over a year ago- found that nothing had improved in its long-term planning of care for children
Last updated 14th Dec 2022
A monitoring visit by Ofsted of North East Lincolnshire Council’s children’s services has found that long-term planning for the care of children has not improved. This is more than a year on since Ofsted rated the children’s services as “inadequate”.
North East Lincolnshire children's services has been found to have NOT improved in the last year, with even more children facing delays in permanence assessments
Short staffing and changes in management have been found to be the cause.
It comes after a recent monitoring visit by Ofsted - who rated the service 'inadequate' late last year.
A council spokesperson said the “improvement work for children’s services has now started, after months of planning”. They also stressed that the local authority has always been clear there is “no quick fix” to the issues in children’s services and highlighted the expected effect of recently recruited overseas social workers, who only began this Autumn.
Children’s assessments have been delayed due to constant high turnover of social workers, the monitoring visit on November 8-9 found. Changes to the senior leadership team though, had led to improved understanding of the scale of the issues.
But these changes had yet to make more than “limited impact” on improving the experiences of children who require permanence, long-term care planning. This was also the case for creating an environment for social workers where they can practise safely and effectively.
“Permanence planning for children has not improved since the standard inspection in November 2021”, says HM Inspector Matt Reed in a letter to the interim director of children’s services detailing the main findings of the monitoring visit.
“Too many children experience delay in their need for permanence being assessed, planned and achieved. The constant high turnover of social workers and managers is resulting in children’s assessments being delayed and restarted without timely conclusion.”
Permanence is defined by Ofsted as ” long term plan for the child’s upbringing and provides an underpinning framework for all social work with children and their families from family support through to adoption”. The aim is for the framework to give a child a sense of security, continuity, stability, commitment and belonging.
The monitoring visit found that “too many children experience drift and delay in their need for permanence being identified, planned and achieved”. Ineffective management oversight at all levels was also identified as causing delays in permanence planning to go unnoticed and the suitability of some children’s placements to be unknown.
The new senior leadership are described by Mr Reed as “realistic about the scale of the issues”. At a council meeting in November, the new director of children’s services, Janice Spencer OBE, admitted vulnerable children were not necessarily getting the care they deserve.
Other findings of the monitoring visit outlined in the letter from Mr Reed to Ms Spencer include:
Too many children experiencing delays in legal permanence, with delays in legal proceedings being started and incomplete assessments and missed court deadlines causing legal proceedings to be drawn out
Some social workers raised workload pressure concerns and reported working extra hours to meet demands, “leaving them feeling overwhelmed and demoralised”
Family members were not assessed early enough to allow for consideration of all possible long-term care arrangements for a child
A North East Lincolnshire Council spokesperson said: “North East Lincolnshire Council wishes to quote directly from the letter, which was written by Her Majesty’s Inspector Matt Reed – one of two Ofsted inspectors who recently visited our Children’s Services teams. This was an interim visit to monitor progress and followed the authority’s ‘inadequate’ judgement by inspectors after our main inspection in November 2021.
“Since the inadequate judgement there has been several changes of senior leadership in children’s social care. This has contributed significantly to the stalling of improvement, not only in the practice area being monitored, but across the service. Most recently, a new interim Director of Children’s Social Care has been appointed and the senior leadership team has been strengthened.
“Together, they are realistic about the scale of the issues and the need for the pace of improvements to increase. The service improvement plan is being reviewed to better inform strategic planning. There continues to be investment in children’s services to support the improvement work and senior leaders are engaging with the increased support by service lead improvement partners.”
“We echo this statement exactly. The improvement work has now started after months in the planning. We have always been clear there is no quick fix to the issues we have – it is a long journey. We have had to rebuild relationships and build new ones – including those with our extremely supportive colleagues in Lincolnshire County Council, and the help of a Government-appointed Commissioner.
“Those building blocks are now in place, with the team being led by one of the most experienced Children’s Services professionals in the country, Janice Spencer. Ms Spencer was awarded an OBE in 2019 for her ground-breaking and innovative work to improve the lives of children. She was the interim DCS Director of Children’s Services at Lincolnshire County Council when it achieved an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted standing, when it was reported how she drove innovation – providing the conditions needed for excellent practice to flourish.
“We are extremely lucky to have her and in the coming weeks and months she will develop those around her to make a true difference to the lives of our children and families.”
In January, an improvement board was set up with council partners after the Ofsted “inadequate” rating. A report in June by outgoing North East Lincolnshire Council children’s commissioner Peter Dwyer made a series of recommendations and instructed the council to work with a neighbouring authority.
The council spokesperson also noted the wider shortage of permanent children’s social workers. There were 6,500 permanent vacancies recorded in September 2021, according to the Local Government Association.
“We have had an over-reliance on expensive and often transient agency staffing and this has taken time to resolve,” the spokesperson continued. “As of last month, 33 trained and professional social workers from overseas started their work with us and this is in addition to 14 of our own home-grown professionals, who have come up through our innovative Social Work Academy.
“These are all permanent staff and are expected to make a huge difference to our relationships with our families and young people. There is an acceptance amongst everyone here of the need to continue to overcome the challenges we have and still face, and we will do so.”
The council’s children’s services had become reliant on agency workers filling more than half of all social worker posts. This, combined with much higher than expected demand for services, has led to a forecast £11.7m overspend in children’s services this financial year.
The seeking of permanent social care staff from overseas began in May, with South Africa chosen to recruit from due to equivalent training standards. The first tranche of these 33 social workers arrived in October and the second group followed in November. It is expected that by January roles will be reversed and more than half of social worker posts will be held by permanent staff, instead of agency workers.