Following our focused visit from Ofsted in 2022 and Plymouth's local area SEND partnership inspection in 2023, we have made good progress in putting in place the priority improvements that were needed.
We are working hard to listen to, engage with and learn from children, their families, our partners and our employees.
We are fully committed to improving our response and outcomes for vulnerable children and young people and that’s where we need you. You’ll be a team member who can take forward these improvements as a hardworking, dedicated and passionate individual.
We have clear Improvement Plans in place, along with support from our improvement partner (Dorset Council).
Our new workforce strategy sets out how we are going to invest and develop our teams. We are committed to:
- Equipping our workforce to deliver the improvements we are making in priority areas, particularly in our children’s social care and SEND services.
- Engaging our workforce in the transformation of key services and ways of working to further improve outcomes for children and young people.
- Ensuring our workforce has the skills and knowledge needed as we transform the way we work and how we deliver our services to children and families.
- Taking targeted action in relation to priority areas of the workforce that have been challenging to recruit and retain.
- Supporting our existing workforce to remain in our workforce and grow, develop, and progress their careers with us.
- Developing internal opportunities to transition into the Children’s Workforce.
- Investing in leaders and managers, and our leaders and managers of the future, to provide the right support for our people.
- Investing in workforce development delivered by our Social Work Academy Plymouth.
- Engaging with our workforce and acting proactively in response to what we are told.
- Promoting Plymouth City Council as a positive and inclusive place to work, generating new opportunities for employment.
Update – March 2024
A children’s social care focused improvement plan has been in place since September 2023 to take forward areas where priority improvements were needed, identified through our own data and quality assurance activity, as well as priority areas from Ofsted inspections, particularly the focused visit of the Front Door in December 2022. This was the ‘stabilisation and firm foundations’ remedial phase of our Children’s Services transformation and improvement programme.
The next phase of improvement in children’s social care is the ‘develop, sustain and embed’ tranche, and our ‘getting to good’ phase of work which will be delivered over the next three years.
Areas where further improvement is needed following the closedown of the focused plan will be taken forward into the plan for the next phase alongside subsequent recommendations from the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) in 2024 and our own improvement priorities identified through recent engagement with staff, children and young people and evidence from our internal quality assurance and performance management.
The Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) took place in January 2024 and the inspection report was published in March.
The previous ILACS took place in Plymouth in October 2018 when the overall effectiveness grade was ‘Requires improvement to be good’.
In December 2022, an Ofsted focused visit of the front door found that the quality of social work practice for children in need of help and protection at the front door had declined and serious and widespread systemic failings were found, which left children at risk of significant harm.
The Inspection in 2024 has found that overall effectiveness of relevant services in Plymouth ‘Requires Improvement to be good’, with ‘Requires Improvement to be good’ grades given for each of the four other judgement areas:
- The impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families
- The experiences and progress of children who need help and protection
- The experiences and progress of children in care
- The experiences and progress of care leavers
No children were identified as being at risk of harm during the inspection. Significant improvements were seen in specific areas highlighted in the focused visit, some practice strengths were identified and recent improvements to practice and the impact of recent strengthened leadership were noted.
Areas of good practice identified to showcase externally include:
- Use of intelligence to drive responses and reduce harm in key areas, including children who go missing, extra-familial harm and in and response to domestic abuse
- Support to 16–17-year-olds at risk of homelessness
- Advocacy and participation with children and young people and acting in response to what they tell us
- Our Academy programme for newly qualified social workers in their Assessed and Supported Year of Employment
Improvements needed
The ILACS identifies key improvements since the inspection in 2018, but this is noted to have been too slow as a result of senior leader instability, most acutely last year. However, since August 2023, leadership is reported to have been more consistent and the drive to improve practice has been appropriately focused and purposeful because leaders understand the strengths and weaknesses of their service and have a realistic plan in place to address the shortcomings. As well as considering structural change and practice improvement, leaders are noted to have made a significant cultural shift.
It is positive that our self-evaluation completed in advance of the inspection was noted to have been accurate, and that our quality assurance and performance framework had enabled us to have an accurate picture of the current quality of services and outcomes for children.
A 3 year strategic plan for our Children’s Service is being concluded, taking forward the priority areas identified in this inspection alongside our wider improvement and transformation priorities, including extensive engagement with staff and young people completed during February.
The inspection identifies that much more is needed to ensure children and young people benefit from consistently good support and consequently a number of areas for improvement are identified:
- The effectiveness of the response to worries and concerns for children out of office hours.
- The local authority designated officer’s (LADO) quality of practice and advice, oversight and recording of allegations.
- The effectiveness of some aspects of joint working across the council and with partner agencies, in particular, housing, health, schools and education providers, and adult social care services.
- The quality and availability of accommodation for children and young people.
- The timeliness of health assessments for children in care.
- How well children and young people are supported to access appropriate education, training and employment.
- How effectively the local authority works with schools and education providers to bring down the current high rate of children being excluded.
- The arrangements to plan for and support children with additional needs to smoothly transition to adult services.
The Ofsted inspection report confirms that we have achieved improvement in some areas, particularly the MASH, and that we have firm foundations in place from which to continue to improve our services further. It provides confidence that we know the areas for improvement and have the capacity to bring about the improvements needed.
We are determined to achieve consistently good outcomes for children and young people, every day, and have an ambitious three-year plan in place to achieve this.
Positive highlights in this phase
- Good progress across all areas of the plan with improvements noted in key areas: in compliance, improved performance and better quality work.
- Priority actions identified in the focused visit of the Front Door have been fully addressed and improvements confirmed in our ILACS.
- Strong and effective engagement of Members, senior leaders and staff across the Council in improvement and commitment to investing in and making the improvements needed. Stability and leadership of improvement is now provided by a permanent Director of Children’s Services and permanent Service Director, Education Participation and Skills.
- We now understand ourselves well, know our strengths and areas for improvement and are focused on delivering the improvements that will make the most difference to children and young people and deliver and sustain high quality services.
- The development and implementation of a revised Quality Assurance Framework has provided improved evidence of the quality of practice across the service and good use has been made of the SLIP support to assure progress and validate our quality assurance judgements.
- Strong improvements across our practice of case summaries, supervision, visits and plans for all children as a result of a focused approach to practice expectations with managers.
Priorities for the next phase
Responding to the recommendations from the ILACS 2024
- The effectiveness of the response to worries and concerns for children out of office hours.
- The local authority designated officer’s (LADO) quality of practice and advice, oversight and recording of allegations.
- The effectiveness of some aspects of joint working across the council and with partner agencies, in particular, housing, health, schools and education providers, and adult social care services.
- The quality and availability of accommodation for children and young people.
- The timeliness of health assessments for children in care.
- How well children and young people are supported to access appropriate education, training and employment.
- How effectively the local authority works with schools and education providers to bring down the current high rate of children being excluded.
- The arrangements to plan for and support children with additional needs to smoothly transition to adult services.
Addressing priorities identified in our self-evaluation, including key messages from extensive consultation with staff, children and young people
- Appoint to permanent senior leadership and management posts, sustain strong governance of improvement and further develop partnerships in key areas.
- Finalise and implement partnership strategies and practitioner toolkits/workforce development in priority areas: neglect, child sexual abuse, adolescent harm and domestic abuse.
- Review our early help and targeted support offer with partners to identify further opportunities to build locality approaches, strengthen the impact of early help for families and reduce demand for statutory services.
- Sustain improvements in the delivery of a timely response by the MASH and appropriate application of consent and thresholds and further develop the MASH as a single pointy of entry to both targeted and specialist services to ensure more families receive the right help at the right time.
- Extend the targeted support offer so that more families receive a co-ordinated and evidence-based intervention when they need more help, reducing the need for statutory interventions.
- Extend the use of family led decision making approaches including family network meetings and Family Group Conferencing (FGC) so that more families are offered a family led support plan when they first need help.
- Increasing the consistency in the quality of assessments, supported by revised assessment training based on our practice approach across the workforce and prioritise our Initial Response Teams, as a key pillar for practice improvement, using the ‘resilience and vulnerability matrix’ approach adopted in Plymouth and which is embedded in Eclipse.
- Recruit to an additional team in our Children’s Social Work (CSW) service and maintain caseloads with an acceptable range across the service.
- Implement the approach to locality ways of working in a phased way which will be set out in our three-year strategic plan (taking the Target Operating Model into phase 2).
- Implement the extended offer from the Virtual School to improve attendance and educational outcomes for specific vulnerable groups.
- Further strengthen the quality of social work practice through a focused learning and development programme from the Academy based on the Plymouth practice approach, targeted on practice improvement priorities including assessments and planning for children, and including effective approaches to embed the learning and evaluate impact.
- Strengthen work to improve permanence planning and health and education outcomes for cared for children.
- Refocus approaches and improve education, employment and training outcomes for our care experienced young people.
- Further develop accommodation options for care leavers so that all young people are in accommodation that meets their needs.
- Implement a leadership and management development programme for Team Managers, Service Managers and Heads of Service to support them to manage change, improve people and performance management, further develop our leaders for the future and achieve consistency in supervision and management.
- Further strengthen the quantity and quality assurance activity, bringing together a wider range of evidence to evaluate the impact of practice improvements and close the loop on learning.
- Fully implement the updated Sufficiency Strategy including additional capacity for brokerage, a programme of work using the ‘BERRI’ model to support children being in the right home at the right time, and a re-focused Fostering Recruitment and Retention Strategy which includes Mockingbird and a regional approach to recruitment.
- Implement the revised Children’s Workforce Strategy including a refocused approach to social worker recruitment and retention, workforce development and career progression.
- Implement Eclipse phase 2 development in accordance with a clear and agreed sequencing of priorities, including real time reporting in the MASH.