Birmingham’s inadequate children’s services department has been slammed after another assessment revealed a raft of failings.
An Ofsted inspection has raised huge flaws in the department which has had widespread failings since 2010, including:
- Failing to keep children at risk of child sexual exploitation safe.
- Hundreds of young people missing from education simply falling off the council’s radar.
- Disabled children not seen by social workers enough.
- Not acting quickly enough to protect vulnerable children.
- The council being “over optimistic” about its own performance.
Ofsted made its third visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in May 2014 and the damning assessment has been sent to Peter Hay, the council’s strategic director for people.
Inspectors, who have consistently identified “serious and widespread failings” in the department since 2010, used evidence including electronic case records, files and observation of social workers.
It comes just weeks after a damning Channel 4 Dispatches programme went undercover inside the department and found social workers failing to cope with high caseloads – and children paying the price.
The report says a shortage of social workers – highlighted by Dispatches – continues, although there are chinks of light.
It states: “Weak manager oversight, inconsistent application of thresholds and a continuing significant shortfall in experienced social workers.”
It continues: “However, the situation has improved from 18 months ago when unallocated cases were in the hundreds. There are now very few cases not allocated within seven days of contact.”
Councillor Brigid Jones, cabinet member for children, families and schools, said: “We recently received a short monitoring visit from Ofsted – not a full inspection, which we anticipate later in the year – and have now received the letter from Ofsted about its findings.
“The letter broadly reflects our own assessment around areas where improvements are needed; as Lord Warner said, the improvement journey will take at least three years. We are now at the beginning of year three.
“We believe that the significant changes to retention of staff and recruitment, extra investment, stable and permanent senior management posts, reduced use of agency staff, setting up a MASH, development of an Early Help offer and improved oversight are consistent with the rate of improvements required.
“We will continue to do our utmost, working with partners and our commissioners, to ensure we have the right framework for social work in this city to become excellent.”
Children left waiting for too long
The report states emerging child protection concerns in open cases do not always benefit from a sufficiently prompt response and so children may be left at risk of harm for too long.
It states: “Current arrangements for responding to disabled children lack rigour in the management of escalating risk and this means that children may be left at risk of harm for too long. Some children wait too long, for either their needs or risks to be recognised or managed effectively. For example, despite a disabled child with an injury disclosing a physical assault, child protection procedures were not instigated.”
Children going missing
The report reveals hundreds of children have slipped off the council’s radar after going missing from school.
It reveals over a period of four months, 253 children slipped out of the system.
Risk to those facing sexual exploitation
Ofsted inspectors say the council is still poor at identifying children at risk of child sexual exploitation.
The letter says:“The arrangements for the identification, management and intervention for children and young people who are at risk of child sexual exploitation are not consistently effective. The quality of analysis and information gathering within risk assessments is variable and not all are sufficiently rigorous in identifying all risks posed.
“As a result, plans are often weak and do not routinely identify the named individuals who will complete particular actions, or incorporate timescales. When children go missing,return home interviews are not always offered or undertaken and findings are not used to prepare and plan for interventions to reduce risk.
A chink of light
It wasn’t all bad news: “Caseloads in most of the social work teams are reducing. The quality of social work supervision is not yet good enough but its frequency is improving.
A run down of failings from the report
- Senior leaders have not made changes quickly enough with the result that services to help and protect vulnerable children remain very poor.
- Council bosses have been too slow to take required action and have only very recently started to implement the critical changes required to effectively protect the most vulnerable children in Birmingham.
- While recent social work practice seen in safeguarding teams is of better quality than found during the previous inspection, improvements are “not sufficiently widespread, robust or embedded”.
- The disabled children’s team does not identify or manage risks effectively and children are not seen by social workers enough.
- Partner agencies – like the NHS – continue to experience challenges in getting children’s services to step in when they have concerns about a child’s welfare or safety.
- Birmingham City Council is failing to ensure children at risk of child sexual exploitation are kept safe and not enough is being done to protect children from potential harm.
- Too many children with special needs are not receiving a formal education and some of the city’s most vulnerable young people are not receiving the help and support they need.
- Significant numbers of children are missing from education and falling off the council’s radar.
- Strategic leadership of safeguarding children in schools is weak.
- The local authority’s evaluation of the quality of practice remains over optimistic.
