Purpose

The Assembly will receive a summary and
presentation on the Council’s annual Children’s Care
and Support Self-Evaluation, highlighting the key messages and
outcomes.

Content

The Assembly will receive a summary and
presentation on the Council’s annual Children’s Care
and Support Self-Evaluation, highlighting the key messages and
outcomes.

Further to Minute 10 (17 May 2023), the
Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care and Disabilities
presented a report on the outcome of the Ofsted inspection of the
Council’s Children’s Care and Support service.
 
The Cabinet Member advised that a full
inspection of the Children’s Care and Support service was
carried out by Ofsted in July last year and its report was
published on 4 September 2023.  The
service was assessed as ‘Requires Improvement to be
Good’, with a judgement of ‘Good’ in respect of
the experiences and progress of care leavers, and Ofsted made eight
specific recommendations covering the following areas:
 
· 
Timeliness of strategy meetings;
· 
The capacity, quality, consistence and impact of supervision and
management oversight;
· 
Assessment and decision-making for children experiencing
neglect;
· 
Timeliness of pre-proceedings pathways;
· 
Consistency of response to 16- and 17-year-olds who present as
homeless;
· 
Oversight of children’s placements in unregistered
children’s homes
· 
Application of threshold in early help; and
· 
Life-story work and permanence planning
 
In response to Ofsted’s findings, the
Council developed an Improvement Plan which was reflected in its
Children’s Care and Support Self-Evaluation for
2023/24.  The self-evaluation was shared
with Ofsted, in line with its Inspection of Local Authority
Children’s Service (ILACS) framework, and an engagement
meeting was held on 17 April 2024 where progress was discussed in
detail.
 
The Cabinet Member was pleased to report that
the Council had received a positive response from Ofsted on the
progress made since its previous full inspection in 2019 and with
the Improvement Plan.  That progress had
been achieved during a particularly challenging period and the
Cabinet Member referenced the Covid-19 pandemic, high population
growth, increased levels of deprivation and increasing complexity
of need as factors which required new approaches and ways of
working.  The point was also made that
the inadequate funding of social care services by the Government
was not taken into account by Ofsted. 
 
On the issue of funding, Members called on the
Government to overhaul the social care funding system so that all
local authorities, and especially those with high levels of
deprivation such as Barking and Dagenham, received adequate funding
to meet demand.  It was acknowledged
that without proper funding, the pace at which the Council would be
able to implement its Improvement Plan and its ambition to invest
in new prevention services would be hampered. 
 
The Assembly resolved to:
 
(i)  Note the
Children’s Care and Support Ofsted Improvement Plan at
Appendix A to the report; and
 
(ii)  Note the
progress made and areas requiring further improvement throughout
the duration of the Improvement Plan.