Agenda item

To receive an update on the recent Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) Focused Visit which took place in November 2025.

Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) introduced the report, which updated the Committee on the outcome of the recent focused visit from Ofsted which took place in November 2025. The inspection had a specific focus on the experiences of Looked After Children and Care Leavers. In presenting the report, she highlighted the following key points: 

• Section 4 of the report outlined the background of the Ofsted inspection framework, and 4.7 summarised the key findings of the visit. The report also provided a link to the letter received from Ofsted following their visit.
• The inspectors noted that, since the last ILACS inspection in 2023, children in care continued to benefit from effective services led by an experienced, stable senior team, with strong political and corporate support. They also noted the progress leaders had made in overcoming previous recruitment challenges and strengthening workforce stability and retention.
• In terms of strengths identified by Ofsted, they found that children enjoyed supported stable relationships with their social workers and were happy with the care and support they received. Children were supported to live with their extended families where possible, or were supported to maintain those relationships if that was not possible, and the matching process worked well. Children with disabilities in care also received good support from their social worker.
• In terms of areas for improvement identified by Ofsted, they found two areas to work on; consistency in response to children who go missing from care, including return home interviews and following up on children who go missing; and life story work for children in long term placements.

The Chair thanked Kelli Eboji for the introduction and invited contributions from the Committee, with the following points raised:

The Committee heard from Brent Care Journeys about their life story work, with SA commenting that she had done life story work with her previous social worker who helped her make an art book about her life and the people in it in an age appropriate way. She agreed it was meaningful for young people to have an understanding of why they were where they were. Kelli Eboji was pleased to hear she had meaningful engagement with her life story, but noted that it was the consistency of children in care receiving that support with their social worker and foster carers that needed to be improved. She noted the comments about needing to be age appropriate, mindful and sensitive, and undertake that life story work at an appropriate moment, but added that social workers should be having regular check-ins with children in care so that the young person had ongoing opportunities to ask those questions and explore those themes in an organic way. In order to improve this work, the service had introduced regular case summaries on files to take place every three months, where the social worker would summarise the previous 3 months with the young person and look forward to the next 3 months outlining what they hoped to achieve with the young person, with the aim of delivering a continuous narrative for the young person of their journey through care. The service was providing life story guidance for social workers which would be launched in March 2026, and was introducing an online platform for hosting life stories which young people could directly contribute to with their foster carers, and their birth families where appropriate. The platform would allow uploads of photos, journal entries and other media. The service was also looking at how foster carers could be better supported to progress life story work.

Committee members highlighted that life story work was something that social workers had been doing for a long time so asked why it was an area for improvement. Kelli Eboji explained that most children would have some form of direct life story work, and whilst that would not look the same for each child, there were a few standard areas that could be required to improve the consistency of life story work across all children in care. The comments received by Ofsted about the direct work were very positive, but there was improvement to be done around creating the narrative with young people.

The Committee asked whether the Council and its providers was signed up to the Philomina Protocol in relation to children going missing from care. Kelli Eboji confirmed that there was sign-up to the protocol, but where there had been staff turnover there was a need to ensure teams were refreshing newer staff members on the principles of that, and there were some providers not up to speed with the protocol. She explained that it had been designed by the police, with partners, to ensure the families and providers that children were placed with were proactively trying to find children missing from placement and working with the police, ensuring all relevant information was up to date and ready to go in ‘grab bags’ for the police to take if the young person did go missing. Placement providers were asked to visit places they thought the young person might be and contact relevant individuals before reporting a child missing, in order to reduce the young person’s contact with the police as part of the agenda to reduce the criminalisation of children in care and care leavers. In response to how the service was looking to ensure providers were up to standard with the protocol, Kelli Eboji confirmed that a provider and partner forum had been held on the protocol the previous month. There was more work to be done in reaching providers and ensuring they had all the consistent information. Michelle Gwyther (Head of Forward Planning, Performance and Partnerships, Brent Council), whose team searched for and commissioned placements and held provider forums, hoped to provide train the trainer sessions on this and use market provider engagement events to cascade information around Philomina Protocol. There were 6 Care Quality Ambassadors who could also ask those questions of semi-independent providers and check that they had ‘grab bags’ ready. There were also issues around management oversight and actions to mitigate children going missing which were not always clear in the children’s records, and Kelli Eboji confirmed that there was some development work around supervision and management oversight which was due to be disseminated to managers, particularly around reflective supervision and how managers could make that as effective as possible.

Committee members asked whether the complexity of placements, location and working with different agencies was impacting the ability to deliver the Philomina Protocol. Kelli Eboji advised that a new Contextual Safeguarding Lead had just been appointed to drive forward that strategic partnership work, collaborating with the police, providers and other partners to improve implementation of the Philomina Protocol amongst all stakeholders. She added that the Met Police were currently undergoing structural changes so there was a need to wait to see the impact of that, but the local authority would continue to build those relationships and work within the structures available. In addition, the service was piloting a new way of undertaking strategy meetings in the Brent Family Front Door and committing extra resources to the Targeted Prevention Hub for return home interviews, building relationships with children who went missing regularly and ensuring all available avenues were being used to address this area for improvement.

Noting the positive comments from social workers about working in Brent, who had fed back that managers were accessible and knowledgeable and interested in their staff’s professional development, and that social workers had manageable workloads, the Committee asked what had been done to succeed in that regard, to the point where the service was able to reduce agency staff, and how it would ensure that continued. Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children, Young People and Community Development, Brent Council) advised that when caseloads were manageable, social workers felt better able to do a good job and felt less stressed and were therefore more likely to want to continue working for Brent. Having a permanent manager helped to build relationships and consistency, and almost all of the social work team in LAC and Permanency were now permanent with manageable workloads. He highlighted the importance of creating an environment for that to happen, and added that the London-wide Pledge around managing agency work also helped to reduce that spend. The service was currently focused on ensuring that the supervision that managers had with social workers was consistent and reflective.

As no further issues were raised, the Committee resolved to note the report and was encouraged by the feedback from Brent Care Journeys who agreed with the Ofsted letter that Brent was doing a good job for care leavers.