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Ofsted has sharpened its focus on stability for children in care in its judgments of social care providers, particularly children’s homes and independent fostering agencies.

The changes to its social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) are a response to concerns that some providers are rejecting referrals for children with complex needs due to concerns about the impact on their Ofsted ratings.

As a result, those children are being placed far from family or friends, experiencing multiple moves or ending up in unsuitable or unregistered accommodation.

Ratings concerns ‘driving rejection of children with complex needs’

Research for the regulator published last year found that 60% of local authorities believed these concerns were often or always a reason that homes rejected referrals for children with complex needs.

By contrast, 60% of children’s home providers said concerns about the impact of a child with complex needs on their rating were never or rarely a reason for rejecting a referral.

At the time of the research’s publication, Ofsted said there was almost no difference between SCCIF grades for homes that care for children with complex needs and those for all homes, with about four in five judged good or outstanding.

This reflected the fact that the SCCIF “was designed to focus on children’s progress and experiences, as opposed to their outcomes”, meaning inspectors should take account of children’s starting points.

However, in a blog post published last month, Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said that the perception persisted among some homes that taking on a child with more complex needs would hurt their rating.

Greater focus on stability in inspection framework

Ofsted said the changes, enacted last week, would put a sharper focus on:

• how providers promote and sustain stability for children, including those with high needs;
• how providers balance the needs of a child requiring placement with those already living in the setting;
• the timeliness of a provider’s work to prepare children for their next move;
• how accurately placement decisions reflect a provider’s statement of purpose.

“We want providers to be risk-aware, not risk-averse,” said Stanley.

“I hope these changes send a clear message that we will recognise providers who step up to support our children with complex needs, and who stick with them though the most difficult times.”

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A council has voted to take back control of its children’s services, six years after it outsourced them to a company at the direction of the Department for Education (DfE).

Councillors in Reading unanimously backed a proposal not to renew Brighter Futures for Children’s (BFfC) contract to run children’s services in the borough, at a meeting yesterday (28 January 2025).

Instead, the authority will take them back in-house, a move that will involve the transfer of 550 staff from BFfC and the closure of the independent fostering agency run by the company.

The process, which the council is aiming to complete by this autumn, is expected to cost about £600,000, though is due to yield annual savings of £200,000-£300,000.

Why council lost control of services

The DfE directed the outsourcing of Reading’s services, then rated inadequate, in 2017 on the recommendation of a department-appointed commissioner, who found provision to be “fragile” and in “considerable need of improvement”.

The council, which supported the move, then established BBfC as a wholly-owned company, with services transferring the following year under a seven-year contract, the overarching aim of which was to improve services to ‘good’.

Following an inspection in 2019, Ofsted gave the borough’s services a requires improvement rating. However, there was no progress on this overall grade after Reading children’s services’ latest inspection, in September 2024.

Services ‘not yet ‘good’

With the contract due to end in March 2026, the council commissioned public finance body CIPFA to review options for the future, and it recommended that Reading take back control of children’s services.

CIPFA said that a “significant factor” behind its recommendation was that BFfC had not achieved a good rating, though it recognised that there were factors beyond its control that had contributed to this.

It said that benefits from insourcing services included:

• Greater direct control over service delivery and operations.
• Reducing demands on officers’ time to maintain service level agreements with the company and eliminating a ‘layer of separation’ between children’s services and the council.
• Potential for greater integration of children’s services into wider council operations, enhancing the cost-effectiveness of service delivery.
• Assurance that children’s services are supporting the wider corporate plans and are more responsive to the council’s changing needs.
• Potential cost savings resulting from the removal of governance structures and operational duplication of approximately £200,000 – £300,000 a year.

‘Now is the time to take back services’

Commenting on the decision, council leader Liz Terry said that “now [was] the right time for the service to transfer back to the council”.

“This not only provides the council with better direct control, but additionally removes a layer of governance and helps to further integrate children’s services with other council services.”

She paid tribute to staff at BFfC “for the significant progress it has made towards delivering a ‘good’ Ofsted rating. However, she added: “At the same time, we acknowledge we still have a way to go in order to achieve that.”

BFfC chair Di Smith said the not-for-profit company’s board supported the decision, adding: “Given the national picture of increased costs and pressures in children’s services, it is logical that councils, including Reading council, would want to have full control of delivery and expenditure at this present moment in time.”

Outsourcing ‘has become less popular’

She also acknowledged that handing poorly performing council services over to children’s trusts or other so-called alternative delivery models, such as BFfC, “[had] become less popular in recent years and are now very rarely the preferred option in response to statutory intervention”.

When Reading resumes control of its’ children’s services, that would leave trusts or companies running provision in 10 of the 153 councils.

Since 2020, just one trust has been created, in Bradford, while Doncaster took its services back in-house in 2022 and Worcestershire did so this year.

During this time, trusts have been considered in other areas subject to statutory directions due to poor performance, but eventually rejected on the advice of DfE-appointed commissioners. This was often on the grounds of the potential disruption to improvements of transferring services to a new body, and the delay to progress that would result from creating such an organisation.

Instead, they have tended to recommend that the authority be supported to improve by a high-performing council, such as those listed as sector-led improvement partners by the DfE.

The DfE, meanwhile, is working on a project to develop a “more cost-effective” alternative to children’s trusts for struggling services.

Children’s services in Worcestershire have returned to council control after being run by a trust for five years.

Worcestershire Children First (WCF) is being wound up with its former staff having been transferred to Worcestershire County Council, which is now back in charge of children’s services in the area, as of 1 October 2024.

The move leaves 11 local authority children’s services in the hands of not-for-profit companies, either after having been transferred voluntarily by the local authority or because the Department for Education (DfE) has mandated outsourcing due to poor performance.

DfE direction for council to lose control of services

The DfE determined that Worcestershire should lose control of its children’s services in 2017, on the recommendation of a DfE-appointed commissioner, and following an inadequate Ofsted rating earlier that year.

The following year, the DfE approved the council’s business case to set up a company it wholly owned to run services and, in 2019, WCF was established, with a five-year contract to deliver social care, early help and education.

Prior to the transfer, Ofsted reinspected the council in 2019, leading to a requires improvement rating, which WCF has since improved further, earning a good grade last year.

Financially-driven decision

In a report to the council’s cabinet in January, council leaders justified the decision to take back control of services on financial grounds and due to the benefits of reintegrating children’s services into the wider authority.

While the company – whose gross expenditure budget was forecast to be £148.4m in 2023-24 – made small surpluses in its first three years, it overspent by £7.6m in 2022-23 and had been forecast to do so by £28.6m in 2023-24, mainly due to national cost pressures on care placements.

The council said it could save about £200,000 a year from winding up the company, which would remove the need for the post of director of resources at WCF as well as those of chair and non-executive directors on the company board.

Existing team structures maintained

Team structures and reporting lines have been maintained for the majority of former WCF staff, including those working in safeguarding, early help, education, early years and inclusion and all-age disability services, according to a council paper published in July.

These teams have formed a new children’s services directorate within the county council, it added.

A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said: “We’re pleased to report that the transfer of children’s services went smoothly with no interruption to services. The cost of the transfer has been confirmed as £83,000 and will deliver recurrent savings of an estimated £200,000 each year.”

DfE seeking ‘more cost-effective alternative to trusts’

The move comes with a DfE project looking to develop a “more cost-effective” alternative to children’s trusts for struggling services.

The project is also aiming to draw up a response plan for the possibility of any existing children’s trust failing financially.

Since 2020, just one trust has been created, in Bradford, while Doncaster took its services back in-house in 2022.

A turning away from the trust model

Since 2020, trusts and ADMs have been considered in other areas subject to statutory directions due to poor performance, but eventually rejected on the advice of DfE-appointed commissioners.

In two of these areas – Medway and West Sussex – the authority made significant improvements, with the former earning a good rating and the latter a requires improvement grade, with good features, from Ofsted last year.

In other cases, such as Herefordshire, North East Lincolnshire, Solihull and Sefton, commissioners rejected a trust on the grounds of the potential disruption to improvement of transferring services to a new body, and the delay to progress that would result from creating such an organisation.

Instead, they have tended to recommend that the authority be supported to improve by a high-performing council, such as those listed as sector-led improvement partners by the DfE.

The same was true of a highly critical report on Tameside council by its commissioner, Andy Couldrick, published last month.

The government is working on a project to develop a “more cost-effective” alternative to children’s trusts for struggling services.

The Department for Education (DfE) project is also looking to develop a response plan for the possibility of any existing children’s trust failing financially.

The work was revealed in the DfE’s annual report for 2023-24 and, while started under the Conservative government, is continuing under the Labour administration.

It is being carried out by the DfE’s regions group, which supports improvement across children’s social care and education.

A proposed solution to ‘failing’ services

The children’s trust model was strongly advocated by David Cameron’s Conservative government as a solution for turning around ‘failing’ services, as well as a way of using structural innovation to raise social care performance generally.

In a 2016 paper, the then government set a target of having a third of councils having, or being on course to having, their children’s services run by a trust or another alternative delivery model (ADM) by 2020.

The most prominent alternative ADM is one council taking responsibility for another’s services, as Hampshire did in relation to the Isle of Wight from 2013-24, during which time the island’s services improved from ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’.

From 2014-20, trusts or companies took responsibility for 11 councils’ children’s services, about 7% of the total.

All but one of these subsequently improved, in terms of their Ofsted rating, the exception being the already good-rated Richmond. The biggest success story was Sunderland, whose rating improved from inadequate in 2018 to outstanding in 2021 under the stewardship of the Together for Children trust.

Concerns over costs

However, since 2020, just one trust has been created, in Bradford, while Doncaster took its services back in-house in 2022. This followed a decline in performance which saw its rating fall from good to requires improvement, partially reversing the progress made from the trust’s ‘inadequate’ starting point, in 2014.

The south Yorkshire authority also said the trust’s services were a “significant budgetary pressure” and that bringing services back in-house would save money through reducing overheads.

In relation to Worcestershire, where children’s services are rated good, the council also cited financial reasons in its decision to bring provision back in-house.

Meanwhile, Bradford Children and Families Trust (BCFT) overspent its budget by £42.3m in its first year, 2023-24, driven chiefly by the widespread issues of placements costs for children in care and high agency staff costs.

In a statement last month, BCFT’s chief executive, Charlotte Ramsden, said it was investing in early help and kinship care to reduce demand for residential placements, was making “good progress” in safely reducing agency staff use and was on target to meet savings commitments in 2024-25.

A turning away from the trust model

Since 2020, trusts and ADMs have been considered in other areas subject to statutory directions, but eventually rejected on the advice of DfE-appointed commissioners.

In two of these areas – Medway and West Sussex – the authority made significant improvements, with the former earning a good rating and the latter a requires improvement grade, with good features, from Ofsted last year.

In other cases, such as Herefordshire, North East Lincolnshire, Solihull and Sefton, commissioners rejected a trust on the grounds of the potential disruption to improvement of transferring services to a new body, and the delay to progress that would result from creating such an organisation.

Instead, they have tended to recommend that the authority be supported to improve by a high-performing council, such as those listed as sector-led improvement partners by the DfE.

Commissioner critical of council but does not recommend trust

The same was true of a highly critical report on Tameside council by its commissioner, Andy Couldrick, published last week.

Couldrick was chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Trust from its inception in 2018 until last year, when he became its chair, during which time it has improved the city’s Ofsted rating from inadequate to good.

He found that Tameside, rated inadequate by Ofsted at the start of this year, had “most of the characteristics of failing services that have moved into children’s trusts”, including “a weak corporate and cultural context; unstable and inconsistent leadership over a protracted period; high churn in the workforce, linked to the leadership inconsistency; a weak partnership system”.

While noting the authority had made progress, he concluded that it could not improve on its own steam. However, he did not recommend that its services be turned over to a trust, saying that the authority, which he found had a tendency to blame others for its problems, needed to take responsibility for its own improvement.

Trusts ‘can be costly to implement and take time to establish’

Couldrick added: “In addition, children’s trusts can be costly to implement and take time to establish. Tameside’s most vulnerable children do not have this time.”

Instead, he recommended that the authority retain a commissioner and should be supported by a high-performing council, which the DfE has accepted through a revised direction.

The council is currently recruiting a new director of children’s services to replace Allison Parkinson, who held the role on an interim basis from summer 2023 to August 2024 and whose work was praised by Couldrick.

In response to his report, the council’s chief executive, Sandra Stewart, said: “We acknowledge and support the recommendations made by the Commissioner to help us achieve the substantial and sustainable improvements we are striving for.

“We have already started to put in place the key building blocks needed to deliver an improved and stronger children’s service that will support better outcomes for families in Tameside. We are committed – as a whole organisation and with our partners – to taking swift and positive action to build on these foundations and creating the stability needed in our workforce to progress.”

Inspectors are to probe how agencies respond to child victims of domestic abuse.

The latest round of joint targeted area inspections (JTAIs) will, in particular, look at how councils, relevant health bodies, the police and probation protect and promote the welfare of unborn children and those aged 0-7.

Inspectors will evaluate the multi-agency arrangements for responding to child victims at the point of their identification, assessment, planning and decision-making in response to referrals, protect, supporting and caring for child victims or those at risk and preventing children from becoming victims.

Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMI) Probation will begin the programme of inspections this month.

What inspectors found previously on domestic abuse

The inspectorates carried out a JTAI programme on the response to children living with domestic abuse in 2016. This found that:

• Too little was being done to prevent domestic abuse and repair the damage that it does.
• Work with families was often in reaction to individual crises rather than preventive.
• Agencies did not always focus enough on the perpetrator of the abuse.
• There was not a clear and consistent understanding about what information professionals can share within agencies and across agencies.

Since then, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 has made clear that children are victims of domestic abuse in their own right if they have seen, heard or experienced abuse perpetrated against a parent or relative.

‘Emphasis on physical violence as abuse indicator’

However, a 2022 analysis of serious cases by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel found that practitioners often categorised the impact on children as “emotional harm” or “neglect” instead.

The same report identified an “overly simplistic and optimistic” approach to domestic abuse and its impact on children, with an overemphasis on physical violence as the primary indicator of abuse and as a means of assessing the risk posed by the abuser.

Non-physical incidents were seen as “low-level” and so were not responded to appropriately and often conflated with “parental conflict”.

More recently, a BBC report revealed that more than a third of social work courses lacked specific training on coercive and controlling behaviour, prompting university social work leaders to say that it was not in their remit to train students in specialist areas of practice.

‘Over-reliance on individual casework’

In response to that debate, academics Brid Featherstone and Kate Morris shared findings from research into domestic abuse and child protection.

They found “despite sterling attempts by amazing practitioners and managers, they were often trapped within approaches that relied on individual casework and risk management,” which “translated into the outsourcing of safety and protection responsibilities to those most vulnerable and least able to respond (often impoverished mothers)”.

The JTAI will draw on evidence including practice observations, an audit of six children’s cases in each area, sampling of a wider group of children’s experiences, analysis of performance data, interviews with practitioners, managers and leaders and the views of children and families.

What agencies will be judged on

Evaluation criteria include:

• Practitioners and support staff see the impact of domestic abuse through the eyes of the child, respond to children as victims of domestic abuse in their own right, are well trained, confident, and knowledgeable and demonstrate professional curiosity, enabling them to identify how to help and protect children and to take action to do so.
• Children’s welfare is promoted and protected through effective and timely responses to adult victims of domestic abuse. Practitioners recognise that abuse does not necessarily end when the relationship ends, and may in fact escalate, and they take steps to reduce the risks.
• Assessments of children and ongoing plans include contributions from all agencies. They are timely and dynamic, and consider strengths within the family as well as risks.
• Risk of harm to children is reduced through the identification and assessment of adults who pose a risk of domestic abuse. These adults are held to account through appropriate and targeted interventions by all practitioners.
• Children and their families are listened to. Multi-agency practice focuses on children’s needs and experiences and is influenced by their wishes and feelings. Practitioners identify and respond to the needs of children who may be unable to share their views, including unborn children.
• Leaders ensure that practitioners’ training, learning and supervision enable them to identify and respond effectively to children who are victims of domestic abuse. This includes single- and multi-agency training that ensures children receive an effective multi-agency response.

‘Time to revisit this important issue’

Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said that, since the last JTAI on domestic abuse, “positive steps have been taken to recognise and tackle the impact domestic abuse can have on children”.

She added: “The time is right to revisit this important area and look at what is happening now to prevent abuse and to promote and protect children’s welfare.

By Ray Jones

This article on social work in the 2000s is the fourth in a five-part series by Professor Ray Jones for Community Care’s 50th anniversary. Each part looks back at key events from the previous five decades that have shaped the social work sector today. His previous pieces covered the legacy of the Maria Colwell inquiry in 1974, the birth of the divide between adults’ and children’s services in the 1980s and the impact of the disability movement in the 1990s.

There may be a sense of déjà vu as 2024 heralds a new Labour government after 14 years of Conservative political control. There are memories of 1997 and the ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ slogan after 17 years of Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

So what was the impact on social work from the administration that took the UK into the new millennium and governed its first decade?

After the marginalisation and neglect of public services during the 1980s and early 1990s, there was the aspiration and expectation of a new era for the public sector and those who used public services.

Photo by Ray Jones

But while Labour valued and recognised the importance of public services, it came into government with the view that services needed to be modernised. Many Labour MPs had been local councillors and were not enamoured with their experience. They had energy and commitment, and were on a mission.

New focus on performance monitoring

Thatcher’s focus on ‘value for money’ was replaced by Labour’s assessment of ‘best value’, with a wider focus on areas such as community engagement and impact.

Labour also introduced a new toolkit of means and mechanisms, such as more performance monitoring and public reporting, to drive change across public services, including those run by local government. And some of it was pretty bruising.

Children’s and adults’ social services were both within the remit of the Department of Health and, initially, of social services minister Paul Boateng.

Within months of the election, according to a Community Care article published in 1997, Boateng revealed his intention “to get tough with local authorities with plans to send hit squads of management consultants into social services departments deemed to be failing”.

Photo by Ray Jones

As Community Care noted at the time, this pledge had “done little to boost morale among social care workers”.

Other levers to promote performance within social services included the creation of performance indicators, generating published league tables and star ratings, with health secretary Alan Milburn naming, shaming and blaming those councils deemed to be the poorest performers.

Alongside the bullish audit culture of performance measurement, there was an emphasis on external reviews and inspection. An example was the joint reviews undertaken by combined teams from the Department of Health and the Audit Commission, where reviewers would spend four to five weeks within each local authority in England and Wales.

The local authorities that received a negative and critical judgment attracted the most media coverage. Then, as now, bad news trumped the good.

Efforts to improve children’s lives

However, alongside this harsh approach to performance, Labour – after a slow start – increased investment, both in the process of supporting change and in new policies and programmes, including to tackle poverty.

It had some success – child poverty fell from 26% to 18% from 1998-2010, driven by increased spending on benefits and tax credits (source: DWP).

In children’s services, Labour invested in a national improvement programme, called ‘Quality Protects’, with regional teams working alongside social services departments to implement new practice guidance and meet targets on areas such as the health, placement stability and educational attainment of children in care.

Photo by Ray Jones

It marked the beginning of government policy’s focus on outcomes. The programme also introduced the concept of ‘corporate parenting’, which required councils to provide “the kind of support any good parent would for their own children”, including enhancing their quality of life and ensuring their safety.

The impact of Sure Start

In 1999, Labour launched the flagship Sure Start programme, which provided parents with safe spaces, resources and support for the early years of their children’s development.

According to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, access to a Sure Start centre for children aged 0-5 improved educational achievement at GCSE, with particularly positive effects for poorer children.

Sure Start also contributed to reducing hospitalisation rates among children and young people and improving the wellbeing of mothers.

However, funding was cut by the coalition government, resulting in 1,416 centres closing from 2010-23.

There was also the introduction of Every Child Matters, Labour’s agenda to join up services in order to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of children.

This was also largely dismantled by the coalition but parts of its legacy remain. For example, we still have the role of Children’s Commissioner for England to act as a watchdog for the country’s children, as well as the formal separation of children’s and adults’ services enshrined in the Children Act 2004.

Structural changes

Photo by Ray Jones

A new infrastructure for monitoring and supporting social care was introduced in England, and largely copied in the devolved nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

This comprised a national inspectorate (initially, the National Care Standards Commission), a national regulator for social workers (the General Social Care Council) and a body to develop the workforce (Skills for Care). Social work became a graduate profession and practitioners were required to be registered to maintain their right to practise.

There was also the advent of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) to harness and promote the knowledge base for social work and social care.

The titles and organisational arrangements have changed  – the NCSC’s functions are now within Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC), and Social Work England now has the functions of the GSCC – but the infrastructure introduced in the early 2000s substantially continues today.

So does the focus on inspections, audits, performance indicators and measurement. The changes introduced into the noughties were then a source of debate about how to improve performance but not skew and blinker practice and management.

It is a concern and a debate which continues today.

Ofsted is to scrap single-word judgments for its inspections of local authority children’s services and regulated social care providers, despite research finding sector support for the approach.

The regulator announced the change a day after the government ended the use of overall effectiveness ratings for state schools with immediate effect.

These will be replaced next year by a ‘report card’, providing a more detailed account of performance, with similar reforms also due to be introduced for early years and further education providers at the same time.

No date set for removal of single-word judgments

Ofsted said that local authorities and social care providers would follow suit and be assessed using a similar tool to a report card, rather than receive an outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate rating for overall effectiveness following a full inspection.

However, it said no date had been set as yet for introducing the reform in social care.

“We’re all travelling in the same direction but we might need to go at a different pace,” said Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for social care.

Response to Big Listen consultation

The decisions are part of Ofsted’s response to the Big Listen, its biggest ever consultation, carried out after a coroner found that its inspection of Caversham Primary School, Reading, in November 2022, contributed to headteacher Ruth Perry’s decision to take her own life.

The consultation, responded to by over 20,000 people, including 4,325 children, revealed strong opposition to single-word judgments.

Ofsted said these were “heavily criticised for oversimplifying the complexities of providers and not providing a full picture of their performance”. Respondents also said that they “can be damaging and lead to extra stress for staff”.

ADCS backing for policy shift

Instead, respondents wanted to see “a more detailed and nuanced reporting method”, highlighting providers’ strengths and weaknesses.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) backed the removal of single-word judgments.

“ADCS has long raised concerns about the use of single-word judgments as they can only ever tell a partial story and may be unjustly negative,” said vice-president Rachael Wardell. “Using one word, or a short phrase, to describe a school, a children’s social care department or an entire system in the case of SEND, does not make sense.”

Sector supportive of single-word judgments

However, separate research with 3,496 providers and 3,831 professionals from across the sectors Ofsted regulates found those in social care were more supportive than not of single-word judgments.

Among social care providers, 47% were supportive with 34% opposed, while among sector professionals, 46% backed the approach and 29% did not. By contrast, just 28% of all providers and 26% of all professionals supported single-word verdicts.

More broadly, social care respondents to the research, carried out by IFF Research, were more positive about Ofsted than their counterparts in other sectors.

For example, almost three-quarters (72%) of social care providers said that Ofsted achieved its ambition of being trusted, compared with 46% of all providers. Also, 85% of social care providers were satisfied with their last inspection, compared with 73% of all providers.

Providers ‘sometimes feel persecuted by inspectors’

However, social care respondents to the wider Big Listen consultation voiced criticisms of Ofsted’s approach.

Some said that providers sometimes felt targeted and persecuted by inspections, rather than supported, with some inspectors open and respectful but others dismissive and agenda-driven.

And the majority of social care respondents (70%) said that an unintended consequence of Ofsted’s inspection and regulation processes was that children’s homes sometimes did not accept children with the greatest needs.

Children urge Ofsted to ask them about relationships with social workers

As part of the Big Listen, Ofsted commissioned charities Coram Voice, Career Matters and Catch22 to carry out focus groups with children in care and care leavers about their views on inspection.

They emphasised the importance of inspectors building trust with them and making sure they could speak confidentially, away from adults.

They also stressed the value of Ofsted staff asking them about their relationships with foster carers and professionals, particularly social workers.

“They want inspectors to understand how this affects them and the negative impact this relationship can have on their care and wellbeing,” Ofsted said.

Children who responded to the Big Listen survey said said the most important things Ofsted should look at when inspecting social care services was how safe children were – which was mentioned by 69% of respondents – and how happy they were (64%).

Measuring what children value

Stanley said that the report card-style assessment in social care would be based on feedback from children and young people about what they valued.

“We need to go on a journey, in social care, that will be with the professionals, children and young people, who were really clear about what they value.

“They wanted to know that we were focusing on them being safe, being happy, leaning into their experience of school etc. We will do that work to make sure that the sub-judgments measure what they value.”

Further Ofsted reforms

As well as ditching single-word judgments, Ofsted said it want to make sure that its social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) inspections took account of how children’s homes created stability for and avoided unplanned endings to placements for those in its care.

It would also seek to focus its inspections of local authority children’s services (ILACS) more on how councils support family networks and aim to keep children with their families, wherever possible and safe to do so, and deliver early-intervention services.

A children’s trust will be disbanded with services returning to council control later this year.

Worcestershire County Council will take back control of early help, children’s social care and education services when its current contract with Worcestershire Children First ends in September 2024.

WCF’s staff – numbering 942.01 as of September 2023 – will transfer to the county council at the same time.

Improvements under trust

The move comes despite services progressing from requires improvement, in 2019, to good, in 2023, in Ofsted’s view, under WCF’s stewardship, and the company consistently meeting targets set by the council.

In a report to the council’s cabinet earlier this month, leaders justified the decision on financial grounds and on the benefits of reintegrating children’s services into the wider authority.

While the company – whose gross expenditure budget is forecast to be £148.4m this financial year – made small surpluses in its first three years, it overspent by £7.6m in 2022-23 and is forecast to do so by £28.6m in 2023-24.

The cabinet paper said this had been driven by national cost pressures on care placements and claimed that the council could save about £200,000 a year from winding up the company. This would remove the need for the post of director of resources at WCF as well as those of chair and non-executive directors on the company board.

However, in a response included in the report, the WCF board pointed out that these savings were “small and will not immediately aid our overspend situation and some of our financial challenges, which are driven by national market conditions”.

DfE direction for council to lose control of services

The Department for Education determined that Worcestershire should lose control of its children’s services in 2017, on the recommendation of a DfE-appointed commissioner, and following an inadequate Ofsted rating earlier that year.

The following year, the DfE approved the council’s business case to set up a company it wholly owned to run services and, in 2019, WCF was established, with a five-year contract to deliver social care, early help and education.

Prior to the transfer, Ofsted reinspected the council in 2019, leading to a requires improvement rating, which WCF has improved further, earning a good grade last year.

Ofsted’s praise for trust 

In their 2023 report, inspectors praised WCF for making “significant progress” in improvement areas identified in the two previous inspections and said most staff were positive about working for the trust, due to its supportive culture and accessible leadership team.

In comments to councillors in September 2023, WCF chief executive and Worcestershire’s director of children’s services, Tina Russell, said the improvements had not been driven by setting up the company, but by strong leadership and additional investment.

However, in its comments on the council’s proposal, the WCF board raised concerns about the potential disruption to the children’s services’ leadership team of winding up the company.

Trust board’s concerns over potential disruption

It said “extremely strong leadership with considerable focus on performance and continuous improvement” was behind the good rating from Ofsted and the importance of maintaining the stability of the existing leadership team “cannot be emphasised enough”.

“The senior leadership have forged positive working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders including the regulators and any change may be considered detrimental by stakeholders and be an unwanted distraction given the challenges we face in trying to reduce our budget overspends in residential care and improving our [special educational needs and disability] performance,” the board added.

Taking back control ‘the right thing to do’

In a statement on the decision, the county council’s cabinet member for education, Tracey Onslow, said: “Bringing children’s services back to the county council once the contract has ended is the right thing to do.

“The wholly owned company was set up at a time when Ofsted deemed our children’s services to be inadequate. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our officers we have seen this rating rise to good at our last inspection in 2023.

“Our officers…will transfer back to the county council and will continue to work tirelessly to deliver quality services and support for the children of Worcestershire.”

The state of the trust model

Worcestershire’s move will leave 11 of the 153 local authority children’s services under trust stewardship, and marks the second time in two years that a council has taken children’s services back in-house, following Doncaster’s decision to do so in 2022.

Doncaster’s trust was set up 10 years ago, at the DfE’s direction, while in the same year, Kingston and Richmond councils voluntarily set up a community interest company – Achieving for Children – to run their services.

A DfE-directed trust was established in Slough in 2015 while in 2016, ministers set an ambition of having a third of children’s services being delivered through trusts or other alternative delivery models (ADMs), such as partnerships between councils.

Spate of trusts created

Over the subsequent four years, trusts were set up in Birmingham, Northamptonshire, Reading (Brighter Futures for Children), Sandwell, Sunderland (Together for Children), Windsor and Maidenhead (under Achieving for Children) and Worcestershire.

However, since then the tide appears to have turned away from the trust model, with only one created during that time, in Bradford.

During this time, trusts and ADMs have been considered in other areas subject to government intervention due to poor performance and eventually rejected on the advice of DfE-appointed commissioners.

A common reason proffered by commissioners has been the potential disruption to improvement plans by creating new organisations from scratch.

Also, in two of the areas where a trust was considered – Medway and West Sussex – the authority has made significant improvements, with the former earning a good rating and the latter a requires improvement grade, with good features, last year.

Structural change ‘not panacea for performance issues’

In addition, a report for the Local Government Association in 2022 found that large-scale structural change was not a panacea for councils’ performance problems, drawing on the experience of children’s trusts.

The study concluded that factors such as political will, specific leadership qualities and the willingness to take a long view around achieving service improvements were the most important enablers of successful change.