Agenda item

To receive an update on the recent Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) which took place in April / May 2026.

Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children, Young People and Community Development, Brent Council) introduced a report informing members of the outcome of the Ofsted inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) that took place between 27 April 2026 and 1 May 2026, which was published on 17 June 2026. In introducing the report, he explained that the Council was regularly inspected by Ofsted, with a full inspection every 3 years across a two-week period. Inspectors reviewed all services including the Brent Family Front Door, children adopted, children fostered and children leaving care and was very thorough. He confirmed that Ofsted had reviewed many cases and spoken to many people. He was pleased with the outcome where Brent Council was judged ‘good’ across the board. For leaving care, Brent had been close to outstanding. The report detailed the strengths identified, and he was pleased that the voice of children and young people had been recognised as a strength as it was a priority for the Council. There were two areas for improvement relating to corporate parenting; life story work to enable children in care long-term to better understand their life history and; training for foster carers and improving the take up rate. The Council was required to submit an action plan outlining how it would improve those areas to Ofsted, and Councillor Rubin, as the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, would have sight of that action plan before it was shared.

The Chair congratulated Children’s Services on the outcome, thanked Nigel Chapman for the introduction and invited contributions from the Committee, with the following points raised:

The Committee asked whether any of BCJ Empire had spoken to the inspectors when they visited. K confirmed that many members of both Empire and Care in Action, the younger group of children in care, had been spoken to during the inspection. In response to whether K felt the inspectors asked the right questions, K advised that they had not asked many questions and had not asked what children and young people did to participate and engage with each other and the Council. Many of the interactions had related to individual cases and life experiences.

The Committee asked how many care leavers were in employment, education or training compared to previous years. Nigel Chapman advised that the rate of young people in education, employment and training between 16-17 was good, but average for 18-21 year olds. He added that there were many factors in care experienced young people’s lives affecting why education, employment and training might be more challenging to get into, but there was a need for the Council to be persistent and follow up with young people through dedicated Personal Advisors. Brent did have higher rates of young people at university compared to other boroughs and offered work experience and apprenticeship opportunities, but he felt there was more that could be done in that space. He confirmed that the programmes available were very targeted as it was a relatively small cohort, and linked young people to opportunities through Brent Works. Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) added that the service continually looked to find connections for young people such as through John Lewis and IKEA, and was trying as much as possible to diversify the opportunities available and reach as many young people as possible. Nigel Chapman received data on education, employment and training monthly and shared that with the Cabinet Member on a quarterly basis for oversight. He agreed that some of that data could be brought to the Committee. Councillor Rubin added that the Employment Strategy was currently in development and a strand around care leavers could be included in that.

In response to a question around school attendance, Nigel Chapman advised that school attendance at primary school was above average, but secondary school had lower attendance due to late entrants to care. The Brent Virtual School (BVS) worked proactively with parents and foster carers to enable attendance at school or find alternative pathways and the exclusion rate was very low. 

Noting point 3 of the Ofsted report, which highlighted that the cumulative nature of risk and need identified in referrals did not always inform risk assessment and decision-making, the Committee asked what was being done in order to improve that. Palvinder Kudhail (Director of Early Help and Social Care, Brent Council) responded that the Council received referrals from many different agencies daily and all those referrals needed to be reviewed by a manager and allocated in the Front Door for further exploration. Often, there was not enough information provided in the referral so there may be a need to go back to the referring agency to understand more information, contact the parents or, where appropriate, speak with the child. Other multi-agency partners were also posted in the front door to assist with that. The inspection suggested that more work was needed to gather that information, data and history more cohesively in order to make the right final decision based on the context of that particular child and family. As a result, she had already made some adjustments in the Front Door to ensure that process was more robust every time, with an audit process in place to monitor that this was happening. Work was ongoing with partners to ensure that the Front Door received good quality information at the point of referral, and training was being delivered to ensure that practitioners within the Front Door were gathering cohesive data, with additional resource put in.

Noting the need to improve the number of foster carers undertaking training, the Committee asked what the Council would do to achieve that. Kelli Eboji advised that a targeted piece of work to improve training rates had already been established before the Ofsted inspection with a letter to all foster carers about training sent out and templates given to social workers to help them manage foster carer training more effectively. The focus was around ensuring the social work team knew what training had been completed and what the training offer was so that they could advise foster carers. The service had also introduced personal development plans for foster carers during their annual reviews, and was being clearer with foster carers which training was mandatory and taking a more robust approach to that, such as imposing penalties on those who did not complete their mandatory training. She confirmed that she would report regularly to the Committee on this through the regular fostering update report.

The Committee asked what would be measured going forward to provide assurance that the Council had achieved the Ofsted improvements. Kelli Eboji explained that the practice improvement plan due to be submitted back to Ofsted would set out targets and the impact the Council would like to see, which would then be used to measure against. Each area would have multiple improvement actions with KPIs and there would be regular updates on the practice improvement plan. Palvinder Kudhail added that the Council regularly asked the ‘so what?’ question to understand the impact of improvements which was further tested through the Quality Assurance Programme, conducting dip samples of cases, speaking with young people to see if they had noticed any improvements, and continuing the audit programme.

The Committee asked how members could monitor the improvements. Nigel Chapman confirmed that the Council would have its annual engagement meeting with Ofsted at the end of the year and would report back on that meeting to the Corporate Parenting Committee. As such, he confirmed that an update report would be brought specifically around the two corporate parenting actions of improving life story work and foster carer training uptake. K added that this was where Empire could add value, such as through speaking to young people about life story work and whether they had seen a positive difference.

In relation to the areas for improvement identified by Ofsted, Empire asked for some participation sessions to delve further into those, particularly on life story work. Kelli Eboji confirmed that this would be done over the summer period.

Nigel Chapman signalled that Ofsted were going out to consultation on the inspection framework. They were proposing to dispose of single word judgements and use a scorecard approach across a number of areas.

As no further issues were raised, the Committee RESOLVED to note the report.