Agenda item

To provide information on the outcome of the recent Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Social Care.

The Chair introduced the item, which was the February 2023 Ofsted inspection report of children’s services in Brent Council, and congratulated all staff who had been involved in the inspection. Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) advised that more detail would be provided at the next meeting regarding the actions the Council were taking in response to the inspection report.

The Chair invited the comments and questions from the Committee, with the following issues raised:

The Committee highlighted comments in the report about the attendance figures for children in care reviews and the quality of those reviews and queried whether that was the norm. They were advised that the attendance numbers were similar to the last inspection, so they had not declined but it was possible that expectations had increased. Most children did take part in their review in some way, usually through speaking with an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) or putting their feedback in writing. In having reviewed those interactions with IROs, Nigel Chapman advised that there were 1-2 employed through the IRO contract that were felt to be not offering as high a quality as would be preferred, where their language used had been officious and not child friendly for example, and which may have been missed in quality assurance work.

The Committee asked about care leavers’ understanding of and access to their health histories, which was a recommendation for improvement. Nigel Chapman highlighted that this was common with care leavers, who sometimes had a fractured history prior to care. The inspectors had found that care leavers, when spoken to, were not able to confirm they knew where their health history was and who to speak to if they needed it, and some personal advisers could not point to where they would get that information. He expressed the need to focus health colleagues and Council staff to be confident in knowing how to access that information. Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) added that care leavers could access their health history via their GPs and the information for doing that was provided to them at their final LAC review, but they may have lost that information or need reminding, so they were now looking to communicate and remind care leavers how to do this at multiple points.

In relation to private fostering, the Committee highlighted the Ofsted finding that a small number of private fostering arrangements did not meet regulation and asked how that would be improved. Nigel Chapman advised that there was a very small number of children who were subject to private fostering arrangements, at less than 10 in Brent. An issue across all local authorities was awareness raising of what private fostering was and ensuring everyone knew how to make referrals. As such, the low number of private fostering arrangements in Brent was likely to be higher in reality and there were likely more children out there being looked after by a relative that would not be considered a close relative, or a friend. As part of member’s safeguarding training, members were informed about what private fostering was, how to recognise it and how to report it. As a result of the Ofsted finding, Nigel Chapman had asked for an action plan to address those areas where they had not been complaint with regulations, and he was confident in that plan and the monitoring arrangements in place for that.

The Committee queried what item 38 of the report meant, which stated that ‘the systems in place have not identified effectively the shortfalls in practice for children who are privately fostered or in areas of practice for children in care and care leavers that have declined’. The Committee were advised that this was the first time Ofsted had separated children in care and care leavers as 2 separate judgements. The judgement was likely a result of the effect of turnover of social workers in LAC teams on some children’s cases and the disruption in that relationship. For example, in some cases there were examples of inconsistent recording of supervision and higher caseload in some teams. An issue for the department was that there was confidence that having a consistent social work manager and independent reviewing officer was a mitigation for social work turnover, but it had not been possible to clearly evidence that in the time that the department had with the inspectors. Overall, the inspectors had seen good quality but there were some cases that were not consistently good, and the service was striving for an even distribution of consistently good work.

In relation to comment 36 of the Ofsted report regarding young offenders, where some personal advisers had taken a more ‘befriending’ role instead of advocacy following a serious incident, the Committee queried whether personal advisers were given training to provide that advocacy to young people. Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) confirmed that personal advisers had not had training on advocacy but there were plans to implement that as a result of the finding as part of an action plan to upskill personal advisers. There were also mentors and advocates through various different options available for young people in the criminal justice system, such as through Coram Voice. In relation to mentoring and advocacy for children and young people more generally, along with the commissioned advocacy services used the Council also had a ”Grandmentors” scheme, where older people were matched with a care experienced young person as a grandparent type figure. There were approximately 20 matches within Brent.

The Committee asked whether care leavers had any entitlement to free public transport. Nigel Chapman advised that currently there was no London wide agreement from TfL about transport costs but there was a campaign to lobby TfL to do free transport for care leavers. Any support the Committee could put to that campaign would be appreciated. The Council were providing travel costs for care leavers to attend training and University.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report.