Years of failure are behind us, claims children’s care boss Next inspection should finally show progress
OFTSED inspectors are no longer finding ‘inadequate’ work in Birmingham children’s services, according to the boss of the trust that runs them.
And the falling number of agency social workers shows services are becoming ‘increasingly stable’, chief executive Andy Couldrick said.
Services were described as ‘a national disgrace’ by Ofsted’s chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw back in October 2013, with several highprofile failures being highlighted over the past nine years.
After seven years of ‘inadequate’ ratings by Ofsted, the council decided to place the failing council department into the care of a trust back in 2016.
Now, giving his first update since the trust went live in April this year, Mr Couldrick said that the service was improving with every visit from Ofsted.
He pointed to a reduction in agency social workers the council was forced to employ as evidence.
“Increasingly the messages are that they’re not finding inadequate work, they’re not finding children who they believe are at risk in ways that we haven’t recognised, acknowledged and responded to,” he told a scrutiny committee on Wednesday.
“The workforce is increasingly stable. One measure of that is the number of agency social workers as a percentage of the workforce in Bir- mingham now is about 12 per cent, whereas it was about 33 per cent three years ago. So there is greater stability.
“They’ve reached a point in Birmingham where they’ve done as many monitoring visits as they have and can report ‘continuing to see improvement, continuing to fail to identify inadequate work’.
“So much so that they believe that part of their role as regulators now is to support improvement, as much as catch us out and test us.”
Ofsted has revisited Birmingham fives times since the foundation of the trust in 2016, reporting improvements with every visit. However, its overall rating has remained ‘inadequate’.
Additional inspections are required whenever a service is rated inadequate, meaning that another full inspection is yet to take place. When it comes to covering child protection services in Birmingham, words like “failing”, “damning” and “struggling” have become very familiar.
Birmingham Children’s services has been in crisis for more than ten years and its poor oversight implicated in the high profile deaths of children in its care including eight-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who was starved to death by her parents, and 18-month-old Keegan Downer, placed with a guardian who murdered her.
Another tragic case saw Keanu Williams beaten to death aged two by his mother Rebecca Shuttleworth in 2011.
Over the best part of a decade we have seen a revolving door of cabinet members, managers, troubleshooters, directors and even government overseers come and go and all to little effect.
The figures have shown a system in crisis – overbearing case loads, a rapid turnover of staff, over-reliance on temporary and agency staff, amid the stress and strain of looking after vulnerable children in a diverse and complex city with high levels of deprivation.
Several changes of management and improvement plans failed to improve the service.
But the latest three-year improvement plan means the service seems to be slowly turning the corner. Neil Elkes
But Mr Couldrick said he was confident the rating would be lifted at the next inspection if the trust continued with the work it has been doing. “I think the trust is absolutely determined that whenever that [full] inspection happens, none of the areas they inspect will be judged to be inadequate,” he said.
“I think it’s a brave thing for Ofsted to get to that point, because of the size of our system and the fact that it’s the biggest and it’s been the most inadequate for the longest time.
“So I think Birmingham has to work harder than other authorities to get across the line from ‘inadequate’ to ‘requires improvement.’
“But I’m absolutely certain that we will have done everything possible to achieve that. We’re building resilience all the time.”