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Action Plan for Improving Children Services in Gloucestershire Council - Strategic Guidance

This action plan focuses on improving children services in Gloucestershire Council based on inspection findings. It covers key themes such as leadership and management, partnership working, and basic practice standards. The plan outlines strengths, challenges, risks, and the improvement process. It discusses the improvement plan's effectiveness, priorities, outcome focus, and opportunities for engagement. Monitoring visits and re-inspections are also detailed.

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Action Plan for Improving Children Services in Gloucestershire Council - Strategic Guidance

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  1. Action Planning Visit Gloucestershire Council Ofsted attendees: Emmy Tomsett, HMI (lead inspector) Shirley Bailey, Senior HMI Nicola Bennett HMI 5 Sept 2017

  2. The inspection findings re-visited Key Themes Leadership and management Partnership working Basic Practice standards

  3. Leadership & Management • Lack of integrity and openness in the senior leadership team. • Identified weaknesses v pace of change • Staff feel vulnerable, fearful of challenging or exposing poor practice. • Staff reportedly feeling vulnerable, whistleblowing, deteriorating relationships between staff and managers. • Lack of accurate performance management information. • Underdeveloped quality assurance processes. • Limited audit activity. • Poor management oversight and weak supervision. • Lack of experience and stability in the work-force.

  4. Partnership working • Thresholds for services are inconsistently understood and applied • Lack of input by partners in key decision making for children • Specific issues in relation to the Police – delays in strategy meetings

  5. Basic practice standards • Children are not seen regularly enough • Culture of over- optimism, lack of professional curiosity • Significant delays in assessing risk to children • Poor and delayed decision making for children • Poor quality assessments and plans for children • Delays in strategy meetings/child protection investigations • Poor case recording • Limited impact of IROs and child protection chairs • Delays in decisions to look after children

  6. Strengths • Financial and political commitment to learning • Good involvement of young people in strategic planning – the Ambassadors Team. • Improving commissioning arrangements • Strengthening of early help services • Improving focus on child sexual exploitation • Adoption service

  7. Challenges & Risks • The ‘inadequate’ effect • Creating an environment where good social work can flourish needs corporate ‘buy in’ • Trying to do too much at once • Making sure areas not found inadequate are given sufficient priority • External pressures

  8. The story so far ….. Consider the verbal evidence base presented by inspectors alongside your improvement plans • do they cover everything? • Are they sufficiently robust?

  9. The improvement plan

  10. Challenging the improvement plan: • Is the plan sufficiently SMART? • Was consideration given to an accompanying risk register or RAG rating? • Have the ‘achieved’ been achieved? • What are the priorities? • Is there sufficient attention to quality vis-a-vis quantity? • Is the plan outcome focused?

  11. Your improvement plan: Some questions…… • Are the ‘building blocks’ evident? • What difference will it make to C&YP? • How does the plan ensure you embed and sustain the necessary front line cultural changes and improvements? • How are children and young people participating in the improvement process? • Are you consistently putting the child at the centre of practice and management? • What evidence of impact will you use to demonstrate that change has occurred and is being sustained?

  12. Further opportunities? • Have all opportunities been seized for the engagement of: • Practitioners • Children, young people and their families • Partners • Other strategic bodies • Are you making the most of audit as a driver for improvement? • Are all other inspection findings not subject to a recommendation being addressed?

  13. Next steps Monitoring visits & re-inspection

  14. Quarterly visits related to key weaknesses and recommendations • Activity to include tracking and sampling children’s experiences • Lead HMI will write a brief report evaluating the local authority’s progress • The report related to the first monitoring visit will not be published • Re-inspection usually within two years of action plan being submitted • Possible shorter fieldwork and evidence from monitoring taken into account /www.gov.uk/government/publications/monitoring-local-authority-childrens-services-judged-inadequate-guidance-for-inspectors

  15. Thank you.

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