‘Building blocks’ are in place to improve

Many of the building blocks for improving West Sussex children’s services have recently been put into place or are imminent, according to inspectors.

The county council received an ‘inadequate’ rating back in May 2019 with children’s services now in the process of being transferred to an independent trust.

However until that happens in October 2021, improvements are being made across the board, Ofsted has confirmed after its most recent monitoring visit in October, which focused on the service’s response to Covid-19.

The report was mostly good news, but there were some areas where standards need to improve as ‘at times the pace of change and the impact on children have not been sufficient’.

One of the examples given was how too few disabled children are receiving help and support based on an assessment of their current needs, with work to address this being ‘very slow’.

But strengthened corporate and partnership working had resulted in vulnerablechildrenreceiving targeted support during the pandemic. This had enabled an ‘effective response’ to the emerging challenges, with higher than national average school attendance and an early return to face-to-face visits.

Meanwhile progress has been made to ‘varying degrees’ in response to serious safeguarding concerns identified in 2019.

Staff reported feeling well supported with equipment, flexible working and help from their managers.

The report said ‘ many of the building blocks for improvement have recently been put into place or are imminent’, adding: “Practitioners are tentatively optimistic about the future. They have noticed and welcomed a shift in culture and the increased visibility of managers. Management oversight and supervision, while mostly regular, are not consistently addressing the lack of progress of plans to ensure that children’s daily lives are improved.”

Cabinet member Jacquie Russell said: “Whilst we cannot underestimate the significant amount of work which still needs to be done to improve our services, and the financial challenges we face as a local authority, the report highlighted that we know our service well, and with our permanent senior leadership team and the continuing hard work of our staff, our improvement partner and others we work closely with, we are in a position to move forward and accelerate the pace of our improvement work.”