Ofsted tells Nottinghamshire County Council how to improve social work services

Education watchdog Ofsted has made a series of recommendations after visiting the authority’s children’s services department to look at arrangements for children in need or those subject to a child protection plan.

The visit itself plays no part in the department’s Ofsted grading of ‘good’, after a 2019 inspection.

However, that assessment did find the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection required improvement, and the April visit was made to set out changes the council should make.

During the latest visit, inspectors found, while children are being ‘supported at the right level of need’, the direction of visits is ‘not always sufficiently focused, time-bound or detailed’.

They found care plans sometimes ‘lack precision and do not allow for meaningful measurement of progress’.

The inspectors said there were ‘missed opportunities’ to use wider family support to protect and help children in the authority’s care.

The authority says new standards are being drawn up to address these concerns and improve the quality of care.

Inspectors also noted a new approach to auditing has been launched by the authority, meaning ‘few’ cases have been audited over the past six months, so auditing is not providing leaders with a ‘reliable line of sight’ to improve support, or identify learning and improvements.

The council says this is something it is working on, with more than 250 audits planned before the end of 2022.

Ofsted recommended the authority provide ‘consistent provision and recording of purposeful, direct work with children’ and improve the ‘quantity and quality of case file audits and their impact on identifying improvements’ for the benefit of staff and children.

The council has confirmed it has an action plan to address the recommendations and improve service quality, with ‘a revised set of practice standards’.

Amanda Collinson, council service director for help, care and protection, said in a report: “A plan for introducing and embedding the standards is being finalised.”

She said this will ‘set out minimum expectations’ of good practice, create something to refer to when providing social work services and highlight council priorities.

The recommendations are set to be discussed by the council’s children and young people’s select committee.