Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Services

1. Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Services Jo Negrini, Chief ExecutiveBarbara Peacock, Executive Director People

2. Context Heading • Children’s Social Care services in Croydon were inspected by Ofsted between 20th June 2017 – 13th July 2017 • Inspectors looked at a range of evidence including case files, observations of practice, and spoke directly to children and families • The inspection looked at: • The experiences of children and young people who need help and protection • Children and young people who are looked including fostering, adoption and those who are leaving care • Leadership, management and governance • Local Safeguarding Children Board

3. Findings Heading • Overall, the judgment of Ofsted is that children’s social care services in Croydon are inadequate • The judgements contributing to this overall judgement are: • The Ofsted report includes 21 recommendations, 18 are practice related • The report also identified significant issues in relation to data quality and quality assurance. • The Croydon Safeguarding Children Board was also judged to be inadequate

4. Improvement Strategy Heading • Initial strategy and plan agreed while Ofsted was on site • Developed a transitional action plan to address areas which required immediate action • Set up an improvement board consisting of senior managers, elected members and partners and chaired independently by Edwina Grant OBE, an experienced children’s services professional • Engaged Achieving for Children, to be our improvement partner • Appointed a new interim Director of Early help and Children’s Social Care, Philip Segurola, who starts this month • A Shadow Children’s Improvement Board meeting took place in August • The first formal Children’s Improvement Board meeting took place on the 5th September and will meet on a monthly basis • The DfE has appointed Eleanor Brazil as the Children’s Commissioner for Croydon

5. Achievements since July Heading Leadership & Governance • Reduced span of control for the Executive Director from September in order to allow greater focus on children’s improvement • Corporate Improvement Team established led by the CEO, which meets weekly to drive the improvement programme • Change of personnel and appointments as outlined in previous slide • Engagement with partners and learning from other LA’s • Plans to relaunch the Children in Care Council in October Workforce • An additional interim social work team has been created in order to reduce caseloads in care planning • Two new permanent Heads of Service have been appointed • An interim Chair of the LSCB has been appointed • Action has been taken to better support newly qualified social workers and caseloads have been reduced where needed • The development of a strong workforce strategy and recruitment campaign has started, which includes a £1500 retention payment to front-line social workers

6. Achievements since July (2) He ading Workforce (cont) • A learning and development programme has been commissioned for first line managers and delivery managers, which will commence in September Social work practice • All cases referred by Ofsted have been reviewed and appropriate action taken • The post of principal social worker has been established • The recruitment of two additional auditor roles to provide additional assurance on individual casework practice. An audit programme is underway • Work is underway to develop a new social work practice model in collaboration with staff • Work has started to relaunch the process for return home interviews for children missing from home or care • Senior managers have met with the judiciary to support improvements in court work Systems and support • Smartphones are being given to all social workers so that they can work flexibly and stay in contact with children and families • A project has started to look at ways of improving business support provided to social workers

7. Improvement plan Heading • The local authority must produce an action plan of how it intends to respond to the inspection recommendations within 70 days of receiving the final report (11th December) • Work has already started on developing a Children’s Improvement Plan. This will focus on improving the lived experiences of children, young people and families through high quality social work • A series of engagement sessions have already taken place with staff to inform our approach to improvement planning • An action planning session will be held with Ofsted in October which will refine the improvement plan • A comprehensive engagement programme with children and young people and partners will also be undertaken

8. Next steps Heading • Continue to deliver the immediate actions from the transitional action plan • Develop the Children’s Improvement Plan in readiness for the Ofsted action planning session in October • Finalise the improvement plan following feedback from Ofsted, staff and partners and receive sign off from Ofsted and the Department for Education • Continue delivering the improvement plan ahead of the: • First Ofsted monitoring visit November 17 and which will be quarterly thereafter • Commissioners report in December