Agenda item

To provide an overview of the recent Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) and how practice is being improved based on learning from the inspection. The report outlines current workforce challenges and how the service is addressing these.

Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) introduced the report, which he explained had two parts. The first part provided an overview of the recent Ofsted ILACS Inspection and its findings, which took place in February 2023, and the second part provided details on where the Children and Young People Department were with workforce challenges, particularly in social care.

In continuing the introduction, Nigel Chapman outlined the general ILACS inspection process. He informed the Committee that the Council would normally expect to be inspected on a three-yearly cycle, but the pandemic had stretched that and Brent’s previous inspection had taken place in 2018 where the Council had been judged ‘good’ overall, with some variability in sub-categories. The department had been very pleased to receive an overall ‘good’ rating when the new judgement was published in April 2023 following the inspection in February, with ‘good’ across the board in all sub-categories. This was the first time Brent had been judged ‘good’ across the Board in all areas. The process for inspection was not standalone but an ongoing cycle, and within a three-year period the Council would expect to receive another inspection, likely in 2026, and midway through that cycle a focused visit. This was a 2-day visit on a chosen topic approximately one year following inspection. This provided reassurance to the Council alongside the scrutiny function. Within the 2023 inspection outcome, there were some areas for improvement that Ofsted expected the Council to action. Palvinder Kudhail (Director of Integration and Improved Outcomes, Brent Council) explained that the Council was expected to produce an action plan to Ofsted within a specified time period based on the 4 recommendations given by Ofsted, which had been done. Alongside that, the Children and Young People (CYP) department had a wider, comprehensive practice improvement plan which picked up other areas that had been highlighted during the inspection but which had not been included in the Ofsted recommendations, in order for the department to be thorough. One of the main priorities of that was the revised workforce development plan to create stability in the workforce at every level, particularly those hard to recruit to frontline posts.

Councillor Gwen Grahl (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Schools) added that the inspection had came at a time of significant change within the CYP department, with Nigel Chapman, Palvinder Kudhail and herself relatively new to the roles. She explained that even though workforce and turnover was a national problem, Brent wanted to be a leader in attracting good quality social workers to Brent on a long-term basis, and she felt that Nigel Chapman and Palvinder Kudhail had showed good leadership on that across London.

In relation to the second part of the paper, Nigel Chapman highlighted that workforce was the biggest risk area to the department regarding social work activity, and workforce was one of the highest risk factors across the board within the Council, not just CYP. Workforce and turnover of social workers had been a factor in the Council’s looked after children (LAC) work being judged as ‘good’ as opposed to retaining its ‘outstanding’ judgement from 2018. He highlighted this was a national and regional issue, and the last nationally published data on social workers showed that the number of agency workers had risen by 13% from September 2022. In Brent, the number of agency workers rose by 19%, meaning Brent was above the national average in terms of agency workers, and vacancies were also high at approximately 20%. However, the Council’s caseload activity, which was a determining factor in social workers feeling well supported, was manageable and below the London average. The actions being taken to address workforce challenges were outlined in the report, and Nigel Chapman highlighted that, through leading in London on workforce, it was clear to him that the issues were beyond a single local authority’s ability to control. Local authorities in London were waiting for central government feedback on further reforms in the workforce. Palvinder Kudhail added that, in Brent, the positive was that there was a stable leadership team in the service and the service had made a good start on filling frontline management posts permanently. The service had been meeting with all agency staff to talk about the benefits of converting to permanent employment, and since April 2023 the service had secured 7 former agency staff who converted to permanent, and there were 3 further agency workers in the pipeline to become permanent. This was good news as for every post there was a cost avoidance of £20k per annum, and it created stability in the workforce so that children and young people had less changes of social worker.

The Chair thanked officers for their introduction and invited comments and questions from the Committee, with the following issues raised:

The Committee was pleased that the Council had retained its overall ‘good’ rating following the Ofsted ILACS inspection, however, they noted that there was one particular area that had been judged as ‘outstanding’ in the previous 2018 inspection - the experience of looked after children. They asked why the judgement had changed and what further work was being done to ensure that did not slip further and could get back to ‘outstanding’. Nigel Chapman informed the Committee that one of the main factors in not being ‘outstanding’ in that area following the recent inspection was due to turnover of social workers in the service. Some looked after children (LAC) Teams had a number of changes of social worker which reflected in some of the case files inspectors looked at. This had an impact on continuity of support for LAC. Whilst there had been a lot of good work in this area, Ofsted had not been able to see work they considered ‘outstanding’ because they were not able to see evidence of the mitigations that the service had in place in relation to social work turnover. For example, there was consistent team managers and independent reviewing officers (IROs) which enabled continuity and stability, but the service had not evidenced fully that impact during the inspection. Palvinder Kudhail expanded on the actions the Council was now taking to mitigate the impact and provide evidence for that, explaining that the service was now reporting on the number of changes of social worker for each child and putting in mitigations for every single child where there had been a change. The service knew that every single LAC had a stable IRO, but they were now looking at other practitioners across the whole system to be the ‘constant’ in that child’s life, such as a mentor, if it could not be the social worker, as mitigation. Since the inspection, Nigel Chapman had now asked for the quarterly performance data he received to incorporate the data on the number of social worker changes a child had, so at a granular level the head of service could then ensure that if a child had more than two changes of social worker then there were plans in place to prevent a further change from happening and that the child was moved to a team that was more stable. He felt this made the mitigations more robust as there was now regular data being received and it was possible to evidence that.

Continuing to discuss the rating for the experience of children in care, the Committee asked whether the CYP department felt confident that the ‘outstanding’ judgement would have been retained if there was enough staff adequately trained in the right place at the right time. Nigel Chapman confirmed that he would feel more confident that the judgement would have been more favourable if the workforce was more stable. The Council still aspired to be ‘outstanding’ and wanted to get back to that rating.

Aside from workforce pressures, the Committee asked what other factors specific to Brent may have contributed to the drop in judgement for the experience of children in care. Nigel Chapman explained that another area that the Council were working on was around sufficiency of local placements for children in care. Whilst the inspectors accepted that there was a need to place some children further away from Brent, there was always a need to find more local placements through fostering and residential care as close to home as possible. The Committee was reassured that CYP was putting mitigations in place to address the reasons for the slippage in the rating. For example, the Council was building its own Children’s Residential home which would enable more of those children to have a placement in the borough, which would also be cheaper for the Council to provide. Other problems identified in the report were ones that could be resolved relatively easily. For example, the inspectors identified issues with care leavers accessing their records which CYP had already taken action on, and clear decisive action had been taken around private fostering placements. The workforce issues were the most significant but also the most difficult to resolve due to the many factors outlined and the trajectory of social work over the past 10 years where wages had remained relatively low, pressure on services had increased, and the roles had became more stressful following a number of public enquiries.

In relation to the second recommendation from Ofsted regarding attendance of children in care at their reviews and the information provided to them, the Committee noted that the Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance, Sonya Kalyniak, had met with commissioned providers to discuss the findings, agree improvement actions, and undertake an audit to further understand practice issues. They asked whether there was any early learning from those discussions that could be shared with the Committee. Sonya Kalyniak responded that the feedback from Ofsted was that there was some variability in the quality of information provided to children, such as records provided to children following their reviews. The service wanted to ensure that when a child’s care plan was reviewed a letter was written to them in child focused language that explains exactly what happened during the review, what the child’s voice was within that, what their dreams and aspirations are, and how they would be supported to achieve them. The audit had found that some of the language that was used at times was not particularly appropriate for children as it was written in a professional manner, whereas other times it was written in a child-friendly way. The service was looking to take the good practice examples of child friendly letters and use them as best practice tools to support IROs to write letters in that way.

The Committee asked whether there was any London-wide initiative or plans to set up an organisation for agency staff that would level the costs of agency workers. Nigel Chapman explained that there were no plans to set up an agency, but there was now a ‘London Pledge’, as referenced in the report. The Pledge had been running for a year. Every local authority except one in London had signed up to the Pledge which capped the rates Social Workers were paid through an agency. This had a lot of impact, and within a year the Council’s spend on agency had reduced and stability had been increased. As such, there was no push for a London-wide agency because it was felt that local authorities were now managing the market more effectively and agencies were listening to local authorities more. Alongside this, Councils were awaiting updates from central government on proposals they were consulting on around managing agencies having an agreed national pay rate and banning the use of ‘project teams’. There had been heavy lobbying around this but it was unclear whether the proposals would be implemented.

Palvinder Kudhail added that, as well as the cap on pay rates, the London Pledge also restricted any permanent member of staff employed by anyone in London to get another job in a London authority through an agency, which was helping to restrict movement of social workers. The Council had been focusing on their good agency staff and talking about the benefits of going permanent. Often, the factors for why someone chose to work with the Council were not always about money, but about having good supervision and management support, a good organisational culture, a reasonable workload, and opportunities for progression. The Council had a Progression Panel to enable that as well as training and development opportunities and were using those opportunities as pull factors. The service was also targeting external recruitment more carefully and using all social media outlets to do that. There was a steady stream of social workers coming through the ‘grow your own’ programme where newly qualified social workers were staying with the Council after they had trained. Finally, the Council had also recruited internationally and a cohort of social workers from India was due to join before the end of the year. The Council had found that international workers tended to stay with the Council longer and they had been set up with an effective package.

The Committee asked what the key factors were that made a social worker decide to continue as agency rather than enter full-time permanent employment. Nigel Chapman highlighted that a recent survey of around 1,000 social workers in London and South East had asked social workers about the attraction of agency. One of the findings was that whilst money was a factor it was not the top factor. Often, it was about the flexibility to fit social work in with their life to maintain a work-life balance. The opportunity for progression was another factor, as there was a feeling that they could switch between roles and take control of their careers if they were agency.

In relation to whether the inspection had been unannounced, Nigel Chapman confirmed that the local authority did not know when the inspectors were coming. The authority would receive a phone call between 9 – 10am on a Monday morning and the inspection would then follow that week. In relation to inspections of schools specifically, which was not within the scope of the report, Nigel Chapman confirmed that they were also no-notice inspections. The school would know that an inspection was due but not when that would be. The school would usually be called on a Monday for the inspection to start the following day.

The Chair invited representatives from Brent Youth Parliament to contribute to the discussion. They asked what the Council was doing to maintain the mental health of looked after children to lower the risk of suicide and self-harm in young people who were in foster care, particularly those with multiple changes in social worker. Councillor Grahl thanked Brent Youth Parliament for the question, and responded that the support provided to care leavers and children in care on the whole was very good. She felt care leavers and children in care had access to a lot of different services and support workers, and there were a lot of different events and activities they could get involved in, including social events, subsidised access to gyms, and work with charities such as the Kiln Theatre and Barnardos where children explored their own identities. Sonya Kalyniak provided added that the looked after children with mental health issues were children the Council wanted to ensure had a permanent social worker and were not experiencing changes, as, for those children, retelling their story to multiple different professionals could be traumatic. The Council also wanted to ensure that the entire workforce was well aware of the mental health issues children and young people were facing so that they could be supported appropriately and interventions took place where appropriate. Sonya Kalyniak was leading that work with health partners, and there was good work happening in that space but she felt there was variability and that was being addressed through the multi-agency audit being done currently. For example, for children presenting in A&E with mental health difficulties, it was essential to ensure that before they left A&E that joined up work was happening and everyone supporting the child knew the child well and what their plan was for when they had left hospital.

The Committee asked whether there was any collaborative reflective practices in relation to mental health where children and young people were involved in order for CYP to gain feedback from them. Sonya Kalyniak advised the Committee that the department did receive a lot of feedback from children and young people on the services provided and the services the department developed. This was something the department was very passionate about, and Sonya Kalyniak supported the work of Care in Action and Care Leavers in Action, as well as Brent Youth Parliament, in order to hear those voices and ensure they informed services. The department was looking at getting young people involved in the training provided to social workers because children and young people were the experts in their own experience, and a joint project being ran with Brent Care Journeys had already done training designed and delivered by looked after children and care leavers to foster carers. In addition, the Council heard directly from looked after children at the Corporate Parenting Committee which was attended by Care Leavers in Action and Care in Action. In the past, those groups had successfully advocated for support such as an exemption from Council tax for care leavers. Councillor Grahl highlighted it could be difficult to encourage young people to participate in something like that as not everyone wanted to be involved in politics when they were growing up, particularly if they were facing other pressures in their life, but there was a group of very active young people attending those forums.

In relation to the action plan arising from the Ofsted recommendations, the Committee asked how that would be monitored going forward, including the timeline for completing those actions. Nigel Chapman explained that the action plan was the department’s, in response to the Ofsted Inspection recommendations. The Council had submitted the action plan within the required 60 days and it had been accepted. Nigel Chapman had chaired meetings internally, which had involved presenting officers, to confirm the action plan, refine it and submit it well within the time. He would review, on a monthly basis, the progress against the actions. The plan was a 6-month time limited piece of work which would be closed off by the end of October 2023 and the department would report back into Ofsted when they returned in November 2023 for the annual engagement meeting. He felt personally reassured that the department was on track against 3 of the 4 recommendations. The final area, which related to consistency of management supervision and recording, was a constant action which was never ‘ticked off’ and completed, but there was evidence it was being strengthened.

Noting the current challenges for the department, the Committee asked what the main concerns for the future were as the department looked forward. Nigel Chapman felt that cost of living pressures were a big factor within Brent and the impact that was having on families through poverty would mean an increase in families being referred to the Brent Family Front Door for support for issues connected to poverty. If the cost of living pressures remained unaddressed then the department was likely to see a rise in that demand, which would put pressure within the system to be able to provide a good quality service. At the moment, he felt that the service was managing, but if the situation continued to worsen it would put the front door under strain. The Committee felt it was positive that the issue of cost of living was front and centre across all partners as a risk factor. They asked for reassurance that a joined up approach with partners was being taken in response to cost of living pressures and poverty. Nigel Chapman reassured the Committee that CYP was working closely with Adult Social Care around transitional safeguarding. This focused on those young people aged 18-25 years old who did not have a disability and were not a care leaver and to ensure more effective join up of services around mental health, housing, support and employment across the piece. This was a longstanding partnership piece of work. Alongside this, there was work in Family Wellbeing Centres and Brent Hubs joining services up. For example, if a family attending a Family Wellbeing Centre and had an issue around welfare benefits then they would receive signposting to relevant services based on a neighbourhood approach.

The Chair thanked those present for their contributions and drew the item to a close. A number of information requests were raised during the discussion, recorded as follows:

i)              For the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee to receive the latest data and historic data on the Brent CAMHS waiting list, including comparison with other local areas.

ii)             For the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee to receive an update within the next 6 months on the response, improvements and outcomes made in relation to the Ofsted ILACS Inspection recommendations.