When Ofsted upgraded Warrington council’s children’s services from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ this month, it took the rare step of singling out a manager besides the director of children’s services for praise.

The department’s operational director was “highly focused on ensuring that frontline staff and managers understand what makes good practice, and is determined in her role as practice leader to see this exemplified in all interventions with children and families”, the report said.

She also “determinedly and prominently promotes and expects high standards from frontline staff and managers, and is instrumental in creating a favourable operational environment for good social work to thrive”.

That operational director, Amanda Amesbury, joined the council in May 2018, and saw immediately that Warrington was an authority that with “the right leadership and support” could achieve a good rating. Making this happen over the subsequent year, Amesbury says, has been about culture.

Amanda Amesbury

“What I mean by that is the relationships that we have with our social workers, our children, our peers, and our partners, including foster and residential carers,” she says.

She says when she arrived at the council, there was still a strong focus on compliance – checking that visits had been done and assessments and reviews were being completed in accordance with the relevant timescales. This had been needed to shift from the ‘inadequate’ rating children’s services received in 2009, to ‘requires improvement’ in 2015.

But to push onto good, she says, they now needed to be looking at the environment, the way social workers are treated, the training they receive – “that whole system approach”.

“What I want to know as a leader is yes, you’ve seen your children and they are safe, but what was the purposefulness of that visit and where’s the evidence of the direct work?

“The language that we started using was all about getting that evidence onto the child’s file, so when they read it as an adult, they can see exactly what you did and why.”

Choosing a practice model

One of Amesbury’s first steps was to undertake a survey to determine what staff wanted their model of social work practice to be – because there wasn’t one particular model in place, and a strengths-based approach wasn’t being consistently applied, she says. This was picked up by an Ofsted focused visit in January 2018, when inspectors found work underway to develop a strengths-based model but “the pace of this has been too slow”.

“Everybody needed to align behind one ethos and one approach – I had no red lines in that, my only requirement was that it should be a strengths-based, relationship model.”

The council opted to go with systemic practice, which Amesbury says made “absolute sense” as she was undertaking the practice leadership programme with the Centre for Systemic Social Work, which is funded by the Department of Education, at the time.

She says that being on the programme helped her to become confident in the knowledge that being a leader who focuses on strengths-based practice was the right way to work, and she was able to bring in learning and new ideas from the course to Warrington.

“People were ready for embracing a social work model and relational practice and all I’ve done is walk the floor regularly and build relationships with my social workers,” she adds.

“If you have those relationships and social workers feel supported, they will thrive. If social workers are thriving, they will provide the best service they can for children and families.”

‘High challenge, high support’

As the latest Ofsted report noted, Amesbury promotes high standards and has focused on ensuring practitioners and managers know what good looks like.

“There’s a mantra in the service ‘high challenge, high support’ – we live by that,” she says.

“I see my job – and we’ve positioned all managers in the same way – as holding the mirror up on practice, having high expectations, but absolutely underpinning that with support.”

One example of how that’s been achieved is Amesbury’s overhaul of what were previously known as performance meetings, where social workers would be brought together to have a discussion about performance, which she has rebranded as staff engagement sessions.

“We talk to social workers about some of the big initiatives around the country, how practice is developing, how we need to be operating and get feedback from people.

“We didn’t take our eye off the ball on compliance but we stopped presenting ourselves in that way and I think that’s led to social workers presenting themselves differently too.”

Consistent social work

The Ofsted inspection found that most social work practice for children on child protection and child in need plans was of a “consistently high standard” and having a positive impact.

It also highlighted the benefits of a new service structure that Amesbury helped implement, which ensures children can receive support from the same social worker – from the point of an assessment through to the stage when the case is stepped down or closed.

She says the council has historically had a traditional approach to social work, with a duty and assessment team who deal with referrals and initial assessment, before a child is transferred to one of the longer-term child protection, child in need, or permanency teams.

I looked at some of our data and some children were having four or five social workers in the space of six months, without any staff leaving or there being a good reason for it.”

“So I decided we needed to implement a process that we’ve called ‘the end to end’.”

This means, Amesbury adds, there are six children in need teams who do the duty work every six weeks, and when they pick up new referrals, they keep that child right the way through – it’s only if the child comes into long-term care that there will be change of worker.

“The reason for that was children on our Children in Care Council told us they didn’t want us to get rid of the permanence services because they liked having a dedicated worker who supports just them, without the rest of the demands – like child protection cases.

“So when our young people said that, we said we would only do it up to that point.”

Doing more to put the child at the centre

This is a strong example of putting the voice of the child at the heart of services, but Amesbury says for the council to progress to an outstanding rating – the discussions for how they can get there are already underway – then this is an area that needs more work.

“If you read a care plan or assessment in Warrington or go to our corporate parenting panel, then the child’s voice is absolutely there, but it’s still not prominent enough.

“For example, we want care leavers to be actively involved in delivering and providing services for care leavers and to be getting to that stage of really innovative practice.”

Ofsted also said the council needed to make its multi-agency safeguarding hub’s screening of repeat contacts for teenagers experiencing neglect more effective – and Amesbury says this will be a big area for Warrington “to be getting its teeth into” next.

The council will need to juggle budget and demand pressures as it continues to move forward in its improvement journey and Amesbury says trying to maximise the impact of the services they already have in place will be one of the challenges going forward.

“The other challenge is the retention of good staff – one of my biggest worries is that we’ve just got to ‘good’ and will that mean all my staff are going to get poached,” she adds.

“But I am committed to making sure they continue to feel supported, valued and invested in here, so that they do continue to see Warrington as their social work home.”

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Medway council is at risk of losing its children’s services after Ofsted downgraded it to ‘inadequate’ following an inspection that found “dedicated” social workers were not being supported to practise safely.

In the wake of the inspection, the Department for Education appointed a commissioner, Eleanor Brazil, to oversee improvements at the council, and report back by 1 December on whether Medway has sufficient capacity to improve itself within a reasonable timeframe or should lose control of its children’s services.

The latest inspection, carried out last month, saw Medway downgraded from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘inadequate’. Ofsted found most services had deteriorated since its last full inspection in 2015, many vulnerable children were being left at risk of harm for too long and senior leaders were unaware of the extent of the failures.

Inspectors brought to the attention of the authority 74 children who were either at risk of significant harm or where there were unacceptable delays in progressing work, requiring senior managers to act quickly to ensure they were safe.

Excessive workloads and workforce instability

Workloads for social workers were a particular problem. Ofsted inspectors found caseloads in early help and assessment teams were “much too high”, which meant “staff were unable to provide the right support to children in order to reduce the harm that they face”.

Within the assessment service, most social workers were responsible for over 40 children, and some as many as 55, while practitioners were routinely allocated additional work as they were also responsible for the duty service.

While staff and frontline managers were committed and morale was good, “several reported concerns about their ability to undertake good-quality assessments, make effective plans and take necessary and timely action due to their workload”.

A significant increase in referrals and high staff vacancies was also impacting the early help service, it found, with dedicated staff not always able to provide a safe service.

Across the department, inspectors found “highly committed and skilled” social workers and managers were regularly working evenings and weekends to see children and complete reports. Inspectors said this was “not sustainable” and criticised senior leaders for not having an “accurate view” of the impact high workloads were having on their staff.

The inspection report said the workforce instability was a key challenge for the council, despite a recruitment campaign helping to reduce the social work vacancy rate from 39% to 25%. Leaders had secured funding to increase the overall number of social workers, the report said, but at the time of inspection the vacancy rate in some teams was still 35%.

Drift and delay

Inspectors found children identified by the multi-agency safeguarding hub as needing statutory assessments were waiting too long to be seen, placing them at risk.

They also noted that while most social workers received regular supervision, managers at all levels were not consistently identifying or challenging drift and delay.

As a result, some children living with serious domestic abuse, poor parental mental health and adult substance misuse were waiting too long in situations of ongoing harm.

Also, too many children spent an extensive period at the pre-care proceedings stage, with no review or progress against agreed actions. Consequently, some children and young people who may need to be in care waited for too long.

Good relationships

Services for children in care and care leavers were rated better, at ‘requires improvement, than the ‘inadequate’ provision for children in need of help and protection, with inspectors noting that decisions to bring children into care were appropriate and that children spoke positively about their carers.

Some children reported being unhappy with frequent changes of social worker, the report said, but despite these changes most children were known well by staff and visited often.

The inspection found some good examples of skilful direct work, where social workers had built strong relationships, supporting children to feel safe to share sensitive information.

Disabled children in need of support were also receiving an effective service, it found, with social workers carrying out child-centred practice and comprehensive assessments.

Leadership shortcomings

Ofsted was particularly scathing about the quality of leadership in the authority, which was also rated inadequate. Despite an apparent commitment to improving services, there was a lack of analysis and understanding of risks to children, which inspectors said were “serious weaknesses”.

A plan to improve children’s services was dubbed “perfunctory” and not based on an analysis of existing weaknesses or a full understanding of children’s experiences, with leaders too focused on process and compliance.

Findings of case audits were over-optimistic, leading to false evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of social work, inspectors said.

Many of Ofsted’s 10 recommendations for improvement related to the quality of management and oversight across all services, while it also called for the staffing capacity issues to be addressed.

Government intervention

The government-appointed commissioner, Eleanor Brazil, has significant experience in improvement work with councils, working with authorities including Sandwell, Dudley and Slough.

Under the government’s direction to Medway, she will carry out a review to “determine whether the most effective way of securing and sustaining improvement in Medway is to remove the control of children’s social care services from the council for a period of time”.

Medway said it accepted all the findings of the Ofsted report and committed to making urgent improvements in response. It said that since the inspection, eight social workers had been appointed to reduce caseloads, which had fallen by 20%, while it had also improved arrangements for reviewing cases, tracking progress and ensuring they were dealt with in a timely way.

A new improvement plan will be published in the autumn and progress against it will be reviewed by an independently-chaired improvement board.

Director of children’s services Ian Sutherland said he was pleased that the Ofsted report recognised social workers’ dedication and the high morale across the service.

“The most important thing for me is that children receive the best possible service and I recognise that immediate improvements must be made, including sustainably reducing high caseloads,” he added. “We have strengthened our improvement team to help support the delivery of rapid change.”

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Problems with its electronic case recording system have continued to dog a London borough, as it failed to move up from ‘requires improvement’ following its latest Ofsted inspection.

The inspectorate found that Lewisham council’s system was “subject to frequent system failures”, which meant that “records may not be up to date, recording takes a disproportionate amount of time, and performance information may be inaccurate”.

When it last fully inspected the council in 2015, Ofsted found a system that was “a stubborn obstacle to good practice and planning”, from which there were “significant difficulties in extracting accurate data” and in relation to which some practitioners had such little trust that they maintained their own records. The limitations of the system were also identified in a focused visit last year.

The latest inspection found that the system had been redesigned and now provided a range of useful performance information, but, despite improvements, problems remained.

In response to the concerns, a Lewisham council spokesperson said: “After the earlier inspections identified shortcomings in our electronic recording system, we started a programme of upgrades, reconfiguration and staff training to address the problem. As the most recent report shows, this work has not yet been completed and we continue to work to improve the underlying IT infrastructure to improve speed and reliability.”

Ongoing early help issues

The inspection found senior managers had “rightly focused” on children at the highest level of risk, but as a result, early help services were still underdeveloped, despite improving them being a recommendation from the 2015 inspection.

The service, which is externally commissioned, lacked capacity with families waiting up to two months for provision, and a management review finding that some saw their needs worsen while waiting. Among those who received a service, assessments were weak and lacked basic information, such as the reason for the assessment.

However, Ofsted found that management oversight of the service had increased and a change to the contract with the provider had increased capacity. Managers were aware of the extent of the work required to establish an effective early help service, said the inspectorate.

Variable practice

The inspection found children in need, children in care, and those subject to child protection plans were regularly visited by their social workers, who knew them very well, and that practitioners undertook purposeful work.

However, it found that, overall, the quality of practice was variable. While a structured tool was used well in stronger assessments to understand risks, strengths and protective factors, in weaker assessments, there is too much description and insufficient analysis.

Child protection and child in need plans were not sufficiently detailed and did not help families to understand what needs to change to improve circumstances for their children, or what would happen if these changes were not made. As a result, some children made insufficient progress and remained on plans for too long.

However, inspectors  noted that disabled children were benefiting from effective services, and that there was sensitive consideration of their needs by knowledgeable social workers.

Social workers in the disabled children team were described as well trained, aspirational for their children, and with good awareness of the increased risk of abuse for this group.

Good support but inconsistent supervision

Social workers felt well-supported by their team and managers, but Ofsted found that supervision and management oversight were inconsistent.

Managers and social workers described having “informal and important” conversations, which had not been recorded, and there was limited evidence of reflective practice, Ofsted said.

Caseloads were still too high in some areas, though where they had reduced this had enabled social workers to build stronger relationships with children and undertake more direct work.

The inspection found the training and professional development of social workers had not received high priority, though there had been a more recent focus on doing so.

Newly qualified social workers were well supported during their first year in employment, the report said, and had protected caseloads and regular supervision.

‘No illusion that this will be challenging’

Damien Egan, the mayor of Lewisham, said the report confirmed the council’s own self-assessment that it needed put work into improve its children’s services.

“While the report rightly recognises that the pace of improvement has increased substantially since last year, and is having a positive impact, the report also highlights a range of areas that must improve,” Egan said.

“I am under no illusion that this will be challenging, but I am confident that we can build on the work we are doing to make sure we continue to make progress and keep up the pace,” he added.

A statement issued by the council added that it was supporting staff through training and improved management to strengthen their social work practice, so that it becomes consistently good. “This is not a quick fix but we are using tried and trusted strategies used by other local authorities who have succeeded in improving the quality of their children’s social care,” it said.

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Adult social care directors in London fear instability among care providers will pose the biggest threat to their budgets over the next five years, according to a new report.

The report by London Councils, which represents the capital’s local authorities,  said directors were most concerned about the cost pressures associated with provider stability and the need to manage local care markets.

It found several councils were planning to invest more in the local market to make it more sustainable, but at a “significant cost” to their “already challenged budgets”.

The concerns sit against a backdrop of increasing fragility in local care markets.

The report, which looked at the state of adult social care in London, said there had been an increasing number of provider closures across the capital. The number of care providers requesting to end their contracts with councils is also on the rise.

The combined worth of contracts handed back to date has been “in the millions”, the report said, with providers citing council rates that do not enable them to operate sustainably and safely as a key reason for terminating arrangements.

It added that councils were working together across London to stabilise the market, but that the “government must also play its role” by ensuring appropriate funding.

‘High vacancy rates’

The report considered the funding pressures faced by adult social care services in London, the efficiency savings already achieved, and priorities for the next five years.

Alongside market pressures, it found directors were most concerned about the costs of supporting rising numbers of people with disabilities, mental health and dementia.

But the four areas reported as currently putting the most pressure on adult social care budgets were the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), supporting the transition of children to adults’ services, integration, and continuing healthcare.

The report also identified recruitment and retention in the health and social care workforce as a challenge, with vacancy rates reaching 15% within London in 2017-18.

It said that the highest vacancy rates were currently in professional roles, including social workers, nurses and occupational therapists, and that there was a growing dependency on agency and locum staff to “mitigate the risks” caused by vacancies.

‘Services at risk’

The report estimated that by 2025, London councils would face an adult social care funding gap of £540m, which is 15% of the predicted national funding gap of £3.5bn.

It said that between 2015-16 and 2017-18, local councils had saved an estimated £480m, with the highest savings coming from schemes focused on health and social care integration, promoting independence, and managing the local care market.

But it warned that this level of savings could not be maintained without services being put at risk, adding that social care departments must not be expected to do so.

Instead, directors surveyed as part of the report listed their top priorities as investment in prevention and early intervention, further integration of health and social care, and investment in managing demand to delay people from needing care.

The report also called for eight key actions on social care, which included the government “fully meeting” the short, medium and long-term funding pressures in London and elsewhere, and publishing its long-term plans for transforming the sector.

‘Increasing demand’

Ray Puddifoot, London Councils’ executive member for health and care, said: “The sector has shown itself capable of adapting, innovating, and achieving impressive efficiencies – even in the face of a highly-challenging financial environment.

“However, the capital’s growing population means and more more Londoners need social care. It’s vital that services get the resources they need to cope with increasing levels of demand.”

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Early help services at Warrington Council are helping to “substantially improve” the circumstances of children in need of help and protection, Ofsted inspectors have said.

Ofsted’s latest inspection at the council, which saw its children’s services rated ‘good’, found the support offered to children and families by skilled early help workers was helping to prevent cases from being stepped up to a higher level of social work intervention.

Inspectors also found early help workers remained allocated to families when they moved from one threshold of need to another, which meant they received consistent support.

‘Consistently high’ practice standards

Warrington’s children’s services were previously rated ‘requires improvement’ in 2015.

The latest inspection, which took place in July this year, found most social work practice around child protection and child in need plans was of a “consistently high standard”.

The report said a change to the service structure, which had been recently implemented, was ensuring children were receiving support from the same social worker – from the point of an assessment through to the stage when the case is stepped down or closed.

However, it added that some children were still experiencing too many changes of social worker, despite this being “a cornerstone” of senior managers’ improvement activity.

The council was also praised for how services respond to children with specific vulnerabilities, such as those who go missing or are at risk of harm and exploitation.

The report said that these children receive well-coordinated and proficient services to assess concerns and reduce risks, and for those who are placed out of area, the quality of support is the same, with the council always responding quickly when they go missing.

‘Diligently tackling obstacles’

The inspection identified positive social work practice for children in care and care leavers, with inspectors praising social workers for having a good understanding of the children they support, regularly visiting children in their placements and thoroughly recording visits.

The report said that many social workers engage in “focused and creative direct work”, which helps children to understand their histories and feelings about being in care.

Inspectors noted extensive efforts to find adoptive families for children and that social workers “diligently tackle obstacles” to ensure children are placed with adopters who can best meet their needs. This has meant an increasing number of children are being placed in “nurturing and loving adoptive families”, the report said.

Social work morale

The senior leadership team and social care managers were praised by inspectors for being “energetic” and “highly committed” to improving services for vulnerable children.

Ofsted’s visit found senior managers were highly focused on driving up the standard of social work and inspectors noted that their goal of bringing team managers closers to frontline practice was already apparent in their “detailed knowledge of children’s cases”.

Most social workers are also permanent and experienced employees, the inspection found, and there is a “continuous supply” of both recently qualified and qualifying workers.

“Social workers’ morale across the service is high, and they are realising the benefits of smaller teams, continuous allocation children, manageable caseloads and the considerable investment in their training and development”, the inspection report said.

It added that most social workers receive regular case supervision and appreciate the importance given to their emotional wellbeing and welfare through regular ‘check-ins’.

The visit found three areas where the council needed to make further improvements:

• The effectiveness of the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) screening of repeat contacts for children living in circumstances in which they are neglected.
• Decisive and early protective measures for children on child protection plans who experience neglectful parenting for extended periods.
• The pace of reviews and decisions for children who live at home and who are subject to care orders.

‘The right support when children need it’

Warrington council’s leader, Russ Bowden, said the result was “hugely important” and a testament to a decade’s investment to improve the support provided to children and families across the borough, which he said would continue with the aim of achieving an ‘outstanding’ grade.

Steve Peddie, the executive director of families and wellbeing, said: “The most important thing for us is how we’re doing in supporting children and families in Warrington and how we are supporting our staff working in very challenging circumstances. Our officers work tirelessly to provide the highest possible quality of care for our most vulnerable children, and I’m thrilled that this work has been recognised by Ofsted.”

Amanda Amesbury, operational director of children’s social care, paid tribute to the council’s “effective partnership” between health, education, the Police and other public service professionals, which she said enables necessary interventions to be arranged quickly, often while assessments are in progress.

“Our practice is based on having good relationships with families and we want to ensure every child has access to the right support when they need it, and that every step is taken to protect children from harm,” she said. “We work closely with our partners every day to achieve this, and this report shows we are doing a lot of things right.”

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Newly qualified social workers in City of York council’s children’s services have been expected to carry too much responsibility too early on in their careers, Ofsted inspectors have said.

Inspectors carrying out a focused visit at the council in July this year found newly qualified social workers had been given “sole responsibility” for child protection cases.

They also found children in need cases were being allocated to unqualified staff, which meant they were taking on complex work, and at times “inappropriate levels of risk”.

Inspectors noted that new senior managers had already recognised this practice was “unacceptable” and were taking steps to re-allocate the cases to social workers.

The council is also revising its support for newly qualified workers, the report said.

‘Social worker stability’

Inspectors concluded there had been a deterioration in the quality of services for children in need of help and protection since their last full inspection of the council in 2016.

They found that while meetings were generally timely and well-attended, there was “drift and delay” in the progression of both children in need and child protection plans for some children, which had been exacerbated by staff turnover.

“Too many children have had too many changes of social worker”, the report said, resulting in a “loss of focus” on what needs to happen to make children’s lives better.

Inspectors also found some children had been on plans for too long, some for several years, which they said indicated a “lack of progress and effective management oversight”.

However, where there was “greater social worker stability and outcome-focused plans”, more effective work was being done to reduce risk and meet children’s needs, they said.

Call for better oversight

The report identified five key areas where improvements need to be made, including:

• Offering better supervision to staff and making management oversight more effective, to ensure that both children in need and child protection plans are progressed on time.
• Improving the quality of plans to make them more focused on children’s needs, more easily understood, and to make clear the expectations of parents and carers.
• Ensuring visits to children and families are purposeful and are recorded in a way that is relevant to their plan and includes the child’s voice.
• Reducing the number of changes of social worker some children are experiencing.
• Implementing an effective quality assurance framework that focuses on the experiences of children and leads to a better understanding and improvement of frontline practice.

‘All cases to be reviewed’

Ian Cuthbertson, the executive member for children, young people and education at City of York council, said: “Keeping children safe is the most important role of any local authority, which is why we welcome Ofsted’s visit and recommendations.”

Cuthbertson added that the council had invested more than £300,000 to speed up improvements, after identifying problems within children’s services.

“I am pleased that Ofsted’s letter notes this, stating positively that the council is ‘on a trajectory of change’ and has ‘political support’ to put effective policies and processes in place to make further improvements,” he said. “Among the changes already made by a new senior leadership team include establishing an improvement board, commissioning a review of all cases, restructuring teams and increasing training.”

Cuthbertson said the council “would continue to work closely with Ofsted, our partners, staff and the Department for Education, to ensure that our children have the best possible services”.

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The NHS plans to recruit 600 more social workers into mental health services by 2023-24 to help it deliver on its long-term plan.

The majority of these posts (360) are due to be in adult mental health and community care services, while 170 social workers would be recruited to work with children and young people, and 70 allocated to support services for people who are homeless.

An NHS England spokesperson said social workers would be a “key staff group” in these services and would be working in “new and improved models of community-based care”.

The projection was set out in the mental health implementation part of the NHS Long Term Plan, which details how health services in England will be organised over the next decade.

The mental health implementation plan states that these workforce numbers are ‘indicative’, but are in addition to existing requirements specified in the mental health workforce plan for 2020-21.

“We expect local areas to ensure the appropriate workforce is in place to staff services, which may be different depending on their existing workforce or local availability,” the implementation plan says.

Where funding will go

Community Care understands the funding for the social work posts will go directly to clinical commissioning groups or integrated care systems (local partnerships between NHS services and councils responsible for planning services).

But it is not yet clear whether the practitioners will be directly employed by NHS mental health trusts, or whether the money will be passed to councils to employ the practitioners and then second them into NHS services under a section 75 agreement.

Section 75 agreements between councils and NHS bodies provide for formal integration of services and are have often been used in mental health to place social workers under NHS management.

In 2013, a survey of 108 councils in England found that 55% had a section 75 agreement in place, involving some degree of integration of their social workers in NHS mental health services.

However, there has been a trend more recently for social workers seconded to provide services within mental health trusts being brought back under direct council control.

In 2016, both Somerset and Kingston councils brought their social workers back in house, with cost pressures, the need to ensure Care Act compliance and “dilution of basic social work practice” among the reasons cited for withdrawing from the section 75 agreements.

A 2018 report by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, which looked at the workforce of adult social care in mental health services, reported that data collected in an NHS benchmarking survey showed that most mental health services continue to be provided through some level of integration, with 43% of 84 English councils using section 75 agreements.

Clear commitment

Lyn Romeo, the chief social worker for England, said she was pleased to see NHS England make “such a clear commitment to social work” in the implementation plan.

She said: “The plan recognises that social work is a key profession with the core skills to deliver improved community and specialist mental health services.

“It also emphasises the vital role of local authorities and social care working in partnership with the NHS to provide the best possible local mental health services.”

The chief social worker’s team has also been working with NHS England and Health Education England as part of a mental health social work group, which includes frontline staff, to look at how the role of social work can be enhanced in mental health settings.

Romeo added: “Social workers emphasise human rights, personalised care and independence in their work with vulnerable people, communities, and families. Their commitment to working with people’s strengths and using communities as an asset in their recovery will be essential in modernising our community mental health services.”

Lisa Bayliss Pratt, chief nurse for Health Education England, said: “Social workers have an important role to play in improving mental health services and outcomes for patients and their families, and they are key to achieving the ambitions set out in the long term plan.

“We believe the [social work] role will help drive innovation and improvements for the benefits of users accessing mental health services and will also help to improve access to services at an earlier stage, making sure that is accessible at the right time and delivered in a more integrated way.”

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Practitioners in Northumberland have an ‘underdeveloped’ understanding of child criminal exploitation, including seeing it as a ‘lifestyle choice’ in some cases, an inspection has found.

The joint targeted inspection of the county’s multi-agency response to child exploitation found training had not had a consistent impact on practice, which meant exploitation – other than child sexual exploitation – may not be recognised or responded to.

The inspection found agencies did not have an up-to-date profile of criminal exploitation in the county and safety plans did not consistently address the risks for children with missing episodes known to be at risk of criminal exploitation.

Inspectors found  “very few social workers” had accessed local safeguarding children board training on criminal exploitation, and though they had received short briefings on the topic, had not read them. Police staff within the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) also had limited knowledge of the subject.

‘Lifestyle choice’

“In some cases, children’s records showed that practitioners viewed children’s behaviour as part of a lifestyle choice,” the report found. “This limits their ability to see children as victims of exploitation.”

More positively, schools had a good understanding of criminal exploitation and were proactive at ensuring risks to children were minimised in schools.

Child criminal exploitation has received considerable media attention in recent years –  particularly the risks associated with ‘county lines’ activity – which is when gangs and organised crime groups groom and exploit children to travel across counties to sell drugs.

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The inspection, carried out by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HMI Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, and HMI Probation in June, included an evaluation of the multi-agency ‘front door’, where services first come into contact with children at risk of exploitation, and a review of relevant cases.

CSE response embedded in practice

The report found that the recognition of, and response to, children at risk of sexual exploitation was embedded in practice. The introduction of a CSE practitioner in the MASH had been “instrumental” in raising the quality of risk assessments and safety planning for children who are identified as being at high risk of sexual exploitation.

The report also found that child protection enquiries were timely, as was escalation to initial child protection conferences where children were identified as being at significant risk. Inspectors also found social workers were engaging with children in a sensitive way to help them tell their stories.

The council was praised for protecting children’s social care resources, while inspectors said that managers had worked hard to make the workforce more stable.

This included retaining social workers who undertook their assessed and supported year in employment with the council, and creating posts for assistant team managers and advanced practitioners. As a result the number of social workers has increased in the last two years, and caseloads have become more manageable.

Need to consider wider networks

The inspection found that assessments where exploitation was a factor were timely, but of varying quality, and some did not sufficiently consider a child’s wider family networks.

“There is an over-reliance on parents’ self-reporting at times, and this is a missed opportunity to understand children’s networks of support more thoroughly,” the report said.

It also found that children’s social care managers were not “consistently effective” at ensuring plans were progressed on time, or at critically challenging social workers to ensure that they had explored and analysed the underlying risk factors for child exploitation.

Another area identified for improvement was the format through which the MASH received referrals, with no single consistent approach. Inspectors warned that this could mean trigger factors that present when a child was at risk may be missed.

Emphasising children’s views

Ofsted has praised a new leadership team for driving improvements in social work at an ‘inadequate’ council, but says the authority is still struggling with workforce stability.

In their fifth monitoring visit to Croydon council since it was rated inadequate in 2017, inspectors identified marked improvements in the quality of practice in its assessment service, with all cases receiving an “appropriate outcome” and being overseen and signed-off by managers.

“This contrasts positively with previous practice and is a strong indicator of progress,” Ofsted said, following a visit that focused on the council’s assessment, disabled children’s and private fostering services.

The inspectorate also found that disabled children received an “appropriate and well-informed social work service” though services were poor for privately fostered children.

In identifying the drivers of improvement in Croydon, inspectors praised the council’s new senior leadership team, director of children’s services Robert Henderson, who took up post in November 2018, and Nick Pendry, director of early help and children’s social care, who joined the council in January this year.

Improved morale and visibility 

“In a relatively short period of time, the new executive director and the director of early help and children’s social care have improved morale, raised the visibility and impact of leaders and managers, started to embed a practice model and created conditions that are enabling steadily improving practice and outcomes for children,” the report said.

The report said the directors had “strong and clear understanding of practice in Croydon and are taking concerted action to address any barriers to progress”.

The council’s then managerial and political leadership were lambasted for the “corporate failure” of not understanding the “serious and widespread issues” across the service at the time of its ‘inadequate’ full inspection in summer 2017.

Children’s services were then run through a wider people directorate, also responsible for adult social care, but the services were separated into new departments in 2018 as part of moves to turn round children’s services. The then people director, Barbara Peacock, left before the restructure and children’s services were subsequently run by an interim director, Eleni Ioannides, before Henderson took up his post.

Workforce instability

Croydon’s 2017 inspection and previous monitoring reports all highlighted problems with workforce instability. The latest report found that, while senior management were prioritising recruitment and retention, it remained a challenge.

“Overall, the vacancy rate is 40%, but this reaches 80% in the assessment teams. Inspectors met skilled and committed locums, both new and longstanding, who are fulfilling these roles, but this remains an area of vulnerability,” the report said.

However, the visit identified some progress had been made on staffing, with eight out of nine head of service posts now permanently appointed to and a new group of service managers in place.

Assessment improvements

In relation to assessments, inspectors found that the service was sufficiently resourced and caseloads had significantly reduced since the first monitoring visit to an average of 18 children, with social workers being given enough time to visit children and properly understand their needs before being on duty again.

However, the report added that in some cases, assessments and plans had not considered the child’s history and practitioners were not “sufficiently confident” in their approaches to direct work.

Also, case records did not routinely include the rationale for managers’ decisions to step cases up or down.

Transfer of disabled children’s services

Services for disabled children were moved back to children’s social care from adults’ services earlier this year and have been reviewed by the council. Inspectors found the review to be “accurate and comprehensive” and also praised the council for new eligibility criteria for this group of children, which “responded to feedback from families”.

Inspectors found all children were visited frequently and practitioners were positively engaging with children and their families, and the majority of children received a service appropriate to their needs.

However, a small number of children had experienced “drift and delay” to their plans, they added.

Poor private fostering practice

The monitoring visit found that the council had not fulfilled its statutory responsibilities for children who were privately fostered and inspectors described this area of practice as poor.

Inspectors found visits to children and assessments had not been completed within the expected timescales and many children did not have plans in place to ensure their needs were met.

A small number of children were also in arrangements where no one was exercising parental responsibility, while another group had been incorrectly assessed as being privately fostered.

However, the report said senior managers were “aware of the deficits” and there were clear plans in place for improvements.

‘Considerable work to do’

Alisa Flemming, cabinet member for children, young people and learning at Croydon Council, said she was pleased Ofsted had noted “the drive and determination at all levels in the council” to improve services, and that inspectors felt the service was “becoming consistently better for children”.

She added: “It is also good to note their confidence in our assessment services, and how we not only safeguard children, but help to strengthen whole families through our early help service.

“However, most importantly we recognise there is still considerable work to do. We are already working to improve our service for children in private fostering as an absolute priority, and will keep up our pace until all children are receiving the excellent service we want them to have.”

This year’s Community Care Live 2019 boasts over 30 free learning sessions to equip you to face the key challenges in social work practice today. You can also sign up to any of our eight legal learning sessions to help ensure you have the legal literacy your role requires. Register now to ensure you don’t miss out. 

More than three out of every five children in care experienced a change in social worker last year, a report from the Children’s Commissioner for England has found.

The 2019 Stability Index report, the commissioner’s annual study looking at the stability of looked-after children’s lives, found that 45,000 looked-after children had their social worker change at least once during 2017-18.

Meanwhile, more than 20,000 – just over one in four – had to deal with two or more changes of practitioner over the same period. Over the 24 months covering 2016-17 and 2017-18, more than half (55%) of children saw their social worker change twice or more, while for 32% it was three or more times.

Children in care continue to face a change in their social worker more frequently than changes to their placement or school, the report found, making it the number-one source of disruption in their lives.

Children quoted in the report spoke of how important it was to have a constant social worker and said frequent changes could be distressing and made life feel more chaotic.

Similarly to last year’s Stability Index (only the second time it had been produced) the report said workforce issues were partly to blame. The proportion of children who experience multiple social worker changes were higher in councils with higher rates of agency staff, vacancies and turnover.

The problem was also generally higher in areas with lower Ofsted ratings, the report found, with one in three children in care experiencing multiple changes of social worker in councils rated ‘inadequate’, compared with one in four children in those judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.

But the report added that there was a “large amount of variation” in the levels of social worker instability, which could not be explained by workforce, child or placement factors.

“Together these factors only explain 11% of the variation across councils,” it said.

Rise in teenage population

The report also identified a significant rise in the number of teenagers coming into care, a group with more complex needs and potentially more expensive living arrangements than other age groups.

It found that between 2013-14 and 2017-18 the number of children aged 16 and over entering care increased by 25%, which was much higher than any other age group. This means that almost a quarter (23%) of children in care were aged 16 or over.

The report said the vulnerability of these teenagers was “stark” because they are significantly more likely to have experienced issues such as child sexual exploitation or trafficking, to have gone missing from home, to be involved in gangs, or be misusing drugs than younger groups.

The report also found this group of children were six times more likely than children under 13 to be living in residential or secure children’s homes, and nearly half were in privately-run homes. They were also 80% more likely to have two or more changes of home within a year.

Many councils were buckling under the rising cost of this specialist care, the report said, with one found to be spending 20% of its entire children’s services budget on just 10 children.

System ‘playing catch up’

Commissioner Anne Longfield said teenagers coming into care was now “the new norm” and it was clear that the care system was “playing catch up”.

She added: “The result is a care system that is struggling to cope and which in turn is not providing the stability that many highly vulnerable children need. All children in care have a right to expect that the state does all it can to improve their chances of growing up in stable and loving environments.”

Jenny Coles, vice-president for the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said local and regional efforts to minimise placement instability for children in care had been undermined by the government’s failure to implement a national strategy for recruiting more foster carers and addressing the nationwide shortage of residential placements.

She added that the reasons why children were coming into care older and their needs becoming more complex will vary, from greater professional and public awareness of child criminal and sexual exploitation, improved multi-agency responses to safeguarding, to the continued impact of the Southwark Judgement in relation to homeless 16 to 17-year-olds.

John Simmonds, director of policy, research and development at CoramBAAF, said: “The care system has been under increasingly high levels of demand while facing significant reductions in resources to address these. This reflects general government policy towards public services resulting in a move towards ‘survival mode’ for local authorities and other services. This is deeply troubling and requires an action plan of considerable urgency – with children and young people and their experiences at the centre of that plan.”

Residential care consultant Jonathan Stanley said the report showed how far the care system was from providing the “secure emotional base” that all children needed, and addressing this was “skilled work requiring investment financially, professionally and personally”.

This year’s Community Care Live 2019 boasts over 30 free learning sessions to equip you to face the key challenges in social work practice today. You can also sign up to any of our eight legal learning sessions to help ensure you have the legal literacy your role requires. Register now to ensure you don’t miss out.