Bradford Council's children's services making progress after inadequate rating - but pace of change too slow

That's according to education watchdog Ofsted, which carried out its third monitoring visit back in October following the service's inadequate rating.

A letter from Her Majesty’s Inspector Jan Edwards following the visit says a new permanent director of children's services is in post and has "appropriately taken the time to understand the scale of the improvement required, and is embarking on a restructure of the service".

It adds: "Politicians and leaders now have a better understanding of the scale of the

improvements required to improve children’s circumstances.

"They have committed considerable finances to increasing workforce capacity and to supporting a restructure of social care and early help."

But, the letter says: "The local authority has particular challenges in significant areas of practice. "There are significant deficits in the quality of practice in assessments, children’s plans,

manager oversight and supervision quality at all operational levels.

"Further issues remain in the resilience and capacity of the workforce and in partners’ contribution to keeping children safe and improving their experience and progress."

It adds: "Senior managers and leaders recognise that there is considerably more work to do

to improve the quality of practice for children in need of help and protection.

"The significant instability of the workforce at all levels has hindered the pace of change,

and, to date, this has been too slow.

"A continuing risk to improvement is the lack of resilience in the workforce. This is evidenced by a recent deterioration in performance over the summer, when social workers were on leave."

It also says Bradford Council was "too slow to secure permanent leadership arrangements".

"This had a detrimental impact on the ability to achieve any meaningful improvement or to positively impact on children’s experiences," it adds.

The letter says social workers in Bradford are "motivated" to help children and families and while there is "some effective social work practice", many children are experiencing delays in receiving an initial protective response and in having their needs identified and met.

"Too many changes in social worker means discontinuity for children, and this is impacting on the timely progression of their plans," it says.

"There are delays for children in being able to access timely support and interventions, particularly for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, domestic abuse services, and intensive family support.

"When senior managers have become involved to resolve issues of delay in accessing services, these actions have been effective."

The letter highlights the work of the 'B Positive' pathway team with "effectively supports children to remain safely at home" and also supports children who are in care to return home.

"The team is working successfully with children with the most complex and challenging needs in order to understand their risks and vulnerabilities and to support parents to manage

differently," it says.

"The team has worked with complex issues of child sexual and criminal exploitation, and has successfully diverted children from gang activity.

"The team is highly regarded by social workers, who have benefited from their knowledge and expertise in intensively supporting children and their families and in helping them to think differently."

Mark Douglas, strategic director for children’s services, said: “The letter from Ofsted highlights positive developments that we’ve made on which we need to build.

"We know there are still many areas in which we need to improve and we need to do this more quickly. We are putting the building blocks for improvement in place including better training for staff, better data analysis and a recruitment campaign for social workers. These will help us make the improvements we need to make at a faster pace.”

Councillor Adrian Farley, portfolio holder for children and families, added: “Ofsted has acknowledged the investment that is being put in to support children’s services to drive the improvements we need. The letter also acknowledges that improvements in data analysis mean we have a much better understanding of practice.

"This is important, because although we need to make sure that the quality of social work practice our children receives improves as quickly as possible, we need to make sure those changes are the right ones and can be sustained.”