Effective planning for when children move on from secure provision is vital.
Our role
The children’s secure estate is a very important part of Ofsted’s work.
Within Ofsted’s remit there are 13 secure children’s homes (SCH) and one secure training centre (STC). As well as inspecting SCHs and the STC, we also support His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons) inspections of young offender institutions.
The importance of good provision
Proper planning for children moving on from secure provision is vital. This should start the moment a child arrives at a secure provision. It requires multi-disciplinary and multi-agency collaboration. And the child’s views and wishes must be central to the plan. The best providers work effectively to make this happen.
Good services help children to:
Some local authority planning needs to improve
Secure estate staff can only do so much on their own. They have a lead role in bringing together the professionals that are key to planning for a child to move on successfully. But it is not within their gift to find the right next place for a child: one that can meet their needs and help with their next steps. That task sits with the responsible authority.
Increasingly, and too often, we see poor planning by some responsible local authorities. They leave it too late to plan.
When planning is not in place, providers are proactive and contact senior managers in placing authorities to escalate their concerns. Sometimes they contact Ofsted. This has become a worrying trend.
The impact of poor planning
The consequences of poor planning for children are not always well understood.
Imagine being a child and:
The control you have over your life is limited and you rely on others to help you.
You are then told by your social worker or youth offending team worker that they do not know where you will be going when you leave the secure provision. As a result, you do not know where you will end up. This is a regular experience and it leaves children feeling frightened, helpless and anxious.
Obviously, it’s important that staff in secure provision work with children to address the reasons for children’s liberty being restricted. But if moving-on plans aren’t in place, it can make the journey much harder. And it can lead children to do things they would not ordinarily do, like hurt themselves or others, in a desperate plea to stay in the secure setting where they feel safe, until they have a future plan that they feel will help them.
Children deserve better
We have heard from some secure providers that responsible local authorities sometimes ask the courts to extend a child’s welfare order until they can find the child somewhere to move on to. It can’t be right that we continue to deprive children of their liberty any longer than the minimum necessary.
This is not acceptable for some of the most vulnerable children in our society. All the good work done can be quickly undone and the next steps may then fail. Staff in secure children’s homes tell us that they often see children coming back as a consequence of poor planning.
Ofsted’s response
When we are made aware of poor planning, we take it very seriously. We are likely to contact the director of children’s services to make sure that they are aware and doing all that they can. As a minimum, it will be a line of enquiry for our next inspection of that local authority’s children’s services.
We are also working with the secure children’s homes sector to better understand the different factors that are creating this problem so that we can share our insights with government to make a difference to vulnerable children’s lives.
More suitable provision is required
We do see some responsible authorities doing their very best to find the right homes for children. And sometimes they find the right places. But we know there is insufficient suitable provision in the right places.
This means their task is much harder and sometimes their only available option is not fully suitable. As a result, we have seen children placed in unregistered provision. These are places where there is no regulatory assurance about the people working with the children or the quality of practice. They also often impose a great financial cost on the relevant authority.
Next steps
We hope that cross-government work following the Independent review of children’s social care and implementation of the government’s strategy Stable homes, built on love will help to address these insufficiencies.
Action is required to provide the much-needed help, care and stability for these vulnerable children.
]]>The Department for Education (DfE) has published several documents as part of the children’s social care reforms:
This blog will give some early views on what these will mean in practice and how they will affect inspection.
We know you will be interested in how Ofsted will inspect in the coming months, while these changes are happening. Our inspections of local authority children’s services have always focused on the progress and experiences of children and families. That will not change.
You should continue to make the best decisions you can for children through child-centred, family-focused work. We will continue to focus on the impact for children. We will continue to inspect against our framework, rather than any individual guidance.
We have also discussed the publications with our partner inspectorates, and we all remain committed to the reforms as a tool for improvement.
Alongside the publications, we also welcome the government’s response to the national panel recommendations about safeguarding disabled children. We must all learn from the awful abuse that happened at the Hesley schools. We will work with the government as they strengthen the whole system that safeguards children. And we welcome the opportunity to work with the CQC on improving the regulation of services. We will respond in June 2024.
Impact on our inspections
Returning to the publications, they set out how the early implementation of the reforms will work. Our inspecting local authority children’s services (ILACS) framework, sets out what good looks like. And our overall definition of good has not changed. However, we will be re-balancing ILACS to reflect the reforms.
This will be about language and emphasis rather than wholescale change. You can find out more for each of the new documents.
The National Framework and CSC dashboard
The National Framework describes the outcomes that local authorities should achieve for children, young people and families. This fits well with how ILACS already describes positive experiences and progress for vulnerable children and their families. So, we will not be measuring compliance with the framework, but hope it helps you to deliver good services.
The dashboard is a tool for local and national learning. We understand that all indicators need to be considered in context, not on their own. As is so often the case in children’s social care, data is the start of a conversation rather than a set of answers. So, the dashboard will not prompt an inspection, but it may help you to talk to inspectors about what is happening locally.
Working Together to Safeguard Children
We know that local areas will be looking carefully at the changes to Working Together, making sensible decisions about how to help and protect children, with careful oversight of practice. Having the child’s welfare as the first principle sets the right context.
We fully support focusing on and engaging with families. We already see this in many local areas. We will want to see how local areas are engaging with families and drawing on family networks to improve children's lives. And we want to see decisive practice when it is needed to protect children from harm.
Inspectors will continue to focus on how arrangements for children in need have:
The additional guidance on supporting children at risk of, or experiencing, harm outside the home is helpful. But we do want to see clearer pathways for these children in the next review of Working Together. And we want to see greater clarity about what works.
Children’s needs must be matched to practitioners with the right knowledge and skills, so children get the right help, at the right time. The new arrangements as to who can be the lead practitioner for children in need (under section 17 of the Children Act) are more explicitly permissive. But they will need to be overseen closely by leaders, including the multi-agency safeguarding arrangement. Appropriate and proportionate social work oversight in these arrangements remains important for children.
We still see a lot of confusion and inconsistency around information sharing. There must be consistent understanding across all agencies and professionals of what can be shared, with whom, and when. There must be good systems for information sharing. And professionals must be knowledgeable about them and confident in using them.
The Kinship Strategy
We welcome the focus on kinship and are pleased to see clarity on the regulatory framework for the approval of all forms of kinship care, which remain at the heart of inspectors’ evaluation of planning for children who can no longer live with their birth parents. The strategy aims to improve the help available for extended families who step in to care, and provide stability, for children. These families must have timely access to sensitive, proportionate, and wide-ranging support that meets their child’s needs. Many of these children will have had difficult experiences in their lives that are like those typically experienced by those who have entered the care system. That is why the emphasis on clarifying the kinship carer role to determine the right level of assessment and support is both important and welcome.
ILACS inspections will continue to focus on the quality of support for children in kinship care. This reflects its status as the right path to permanence and stability for many thousands of children. We will be making some adjustments to language in the framework so that our existing practice is clearly labelled as kinship.
Over the years, we have continued to see an improving picture of local authority practice. This is despite the disruption of the pandemic, sufficiency challenges and increasing demand. I have every confidence that the sector will use the reforms to improve further – maintaining a relentless focus on bettering children's lives, supporting children to be at home or in their wider family wherever possible and acting decisively where not.
Next Steps
Please do read the publications and take the time to consider how they will be implemented in your area, but be reassured that Ofsted’s focus remains on evaluating the impact for children.
]]>We know that applying to register a children’s home is a serious step. It is right that there are exacting standards to meet, but we want the process to work well. The following hints and tips should help with a smoother application.
We currently have over 3,000 registered children’s homes. But, as I blogged about last year, there remains a need for specialist homes that can provide high-quality care for children with multiple and complex needs.
We do not necessarily need more children’s homes; we need the right homes. We need homes that offer suitable care for the most vulnerable children with multiple needs due to their past experiences.
Some providers are trying to find creative solutions. We have been looking at how we can take that into account in our registration process.
We have created some principles to help our inspectors when they are reviewing applications. We are not lowering our standards. We still make decisions based on whether the applicant complies with (and will continue to comply with) the legal requirements. The principles focus our decision-making on children’s best interests, particularly where the application is for a less conventional home.
The principles are that:
In September 2021, we published a blog ‘Applying to register a children’s home: top tips’.
We wanted to highlight this blog again, and provide some further tips based on some of the frequent asked questions.
We do not expect a full staff team to be in place before you register. But when we carry out the registration visit, we will need to see that you have enough staff and they have the right experience and qualifications to meet the children's needs. They should be able to look after the number of children you intend to accommodate from the start of your registration.
So, if you will only be caring for one child at first, we will only expect you to have sufficient staff to care for one child. But we will be looking for this to be reflected in your business plans. And we will want to see a plan for how you will recruit the staff to care for more children in the future.
We know how difficult it is right now, to find the right people with the right skills to manage your new home. Legislation sets out what managers need to demonstrate, to be considered fit and suitable. We cannot register people who do not meet those criteria. You should be confident that your manager can show us that they have the required skills, knowledge and experience. Otherwise, we cannot recommend that your home is registered.
To register you will also need someone to be the responsible individual (RI) who has the skills and experience set out in regulation 26. The RI has a very important role, particularly in the first few months as a home is established. Even experienced managers need support. One of the reasons newly registered homes can be judged inadequate at their first full inspection is because the RI or manager left shortly after registration and was not replaced or replaced quickly enough.
For a manager to manage 2 homes, we need to be satisfied that the manager has the required experience, qualifications and skills. We need to be confident that they can manage each home, and the care of the children, effectively and on a daily basis. We usually consider factors including:
Our introduction to children’s homes guidance gives more detail.
When we visit premises, we are looking for things such as:
You may apply to register a children’s home where the care and accommodation is provided in more than one building. You can accommodate up to 6 children in up to 4 buildings within a single registration with one manager. We call this a ‘multi-building children’s home’.
A multi-building children’s home should allow you to make child-centred decisions about where each child lives. It can make it easier to make sure that you meet their individual needs. These decisions should be taken in agreement with the placing authority. It might mean that you can offer a place to a child who needs somewhere to live quickly or who cannot easily live with other children immediately. We have published guidance on registering a multi-building children’s home.
Your location assessment must show the steps you have taken to make sure that:
You will also need to consult relevant local bodies and services, and consider their views. Inspectors will ask you for evidence of your contact with the right people in the local authority. They will also ask how your location assessment has informed your plans for the home you want to open.
You will need to show that you either don’t need planning permission, or that you have the right planning permission in place. If you have it at the start of your application, this means that we will have an important piece of your application already to hand.
We do accept applications where you have applied for planning permission, but you have not yet had a response. We know there can be long waits and you may want to challenge decisions. We know that this can be frustrating, but there is nothing we can do except wait for you to get the correct permissions.
We know that submitting forms to us can sometimes feel burdensome, particularly if you have done so in the past. We are trying to reduce this burden, but wanted to explain why this is still required in some cases.
We do accept applications from someone with an older DBS check, providing they have been subscribed to the DBS Update Service ever since. We do not insist on people working in children’s social care being subscribed to the Update Service but we do recommend it. We know it costs £13 a year but it means you will not need another DBS check while you subscribe, and will not need to carry out a new one when applying.
It is also really important that applicants make sure that they identify the right referees. The best referees have professional management experience of a person’s work with children, and the last employer is a must. References are vital to our assessment of an applicant, and an important part of assessing their suitability. I appreciate that providers may have already sought references for their managers, but we are still required to seek our own. The provider’s employment process is different to our registration process.
We will accept the application with a self-declaration and review the GP’s form when it arrives. At present, we are unable to make a registration decision without something from your GP.
If our application website does not give you the information that you need when trying to submit an application to register, send an email to sc.admin@ofsted.gov.uk with the subject line ‘Social care application’ and provide your full name and reference number for someone to call you.
We hope that this information is helpful. We want to help you to open the right homes in the right places so that so that more children can live closer to home, nurtured by skilful staff.
]]>Ofsted’s consultation response
Last month Ofsted submitted its response to the government’s consultation Stable Homes, Built on Love. I am sure many of you did the same.
There’s a lot in the proposals that we welcome. With additional resources and a sharp focus on existing and emerging best practice, I am sure we can all achieve our ambitions for children and families. But there are also areas that could be strengthened. Some of the proposals will develop as the Department for Education (DfE) continues to work closely with the sector and care experienced children and adults. And of course, change in the child protection and care system needs to be well resourced, managed with great care and built on what works.
It’s important that the whole of government actively supports these reforms. Child protection is everybody’s concern, and children in care and care leavers should be everybody’s concern too. The full force of cross-government child and family-centred policy making could do a great deal to improve the life opportunities of all.
We have published our full submission to the Stable Homes, Built on Love consultation to accompany this blog. (We’ve also published our submissions to the national framework and dashboard consultation, and the child and family social worker workforce consultation.)
An improving sector
We fully support the focus on families – for most children, the family is likely to be the place that they are able to flourish the most. In the highest performing local authorities, practice already mirrors the reforms. We see sensitive and skilled social work practice with families set alongside a passionate, child-centred approach that can also act with authority and decisiveness when the family is not the right place. Even in local authorities that are performing less well, there are social workers who use their skills and expertise every day to make good decisions for children.
There are multiple challenges facing the sector, including:
Despite this, we see plenty of good practice. Over the past 5 years, we have seen the number of local authorities graded inadequate more than halve, from 22% to 9%, and the proportion judged good or outstanding rise from 36% to 60%.
Family help – capacity and oversight
There are definite benefits in a system that merges targeted early help and child in need work into one family help service. The task for LAs is to make sure that changes in practice support making the right decisions for children. Strong oversight of both practice and dynamic risk will be crucial.
The system could become overwhelmed if more children and families are drawn into the statutory system. A stretched workforce and limited capacity could make it harder to spot new or escalating risks. It’s important that LAs have strong oversight so that they can guard against professionals being too ‘adult focused.’ We must not lose sight of the Children Act principle of the paramountcy of a child’s welfare.
Some of the most skilled and complex work to help families and protect children is with children in need. The distinction between families who need help and those in which there is significant risk to children is not easily drawn. Families’ needs and risks to children are dynamic and can change very quickly. Where parents have a wide range of complex needs, or where parents are struggling to recognise and meet their children’s needs, professionals can get drawn in to complex family dynamics.
Many children in need have multiple needs, as do their parents. Balancing supportive approaches while keeping a focus on risks is not easy. The difference between family support and child protection is often about the degree of risk, not the nature of the support or approach required. Child protection and family support both need to be supportive as well as authoritative.
Looking for solutions in family networks and working with strengths is absolutely the right thing to do; without delay in action when needed. Getting the right support early on to children in their families is the right thing to do. But this will need commitment from all partners and local agencies - local authorities cannot do this alone.
We want to see social work skills valued. Lead professionals who are not qualified social workers are likely to need more support and oversight to identify risk. Some local authorities manage this well. But some poorly performing local authorities do not have enough social work oversight and do not emphasise support. This can lead to a more adult-focused approach that misses the needs of and risks to the child.
Tenacious child protection work needs to take place at all stages of a child’s journey. The safeguarding of looked after children also requires finely tuned practitioner skills, as does their return safely to their birth or wider family. Professionals need to listen to the voices of children and their families while making decisions about help, protection and care.
Disabled children
As the DfE strategy sets out, these reforms are occurring at the same time as major changes to the SEND (special educational needs and/or disabilities) and alternative provision system. A very high proportion of children with social care involvement have SEND, so these need to complement each other. The current system can be fragmented and there are challenges nationally as well as locally in delivering what children need.
Disabled children need support to remain living with their families wherever possible. Where it is not, there need to be more options for children to live closer to their families.
Embedding reforms across all local authorities
We know that in worse performing local authorities, the starting point is often compliance with basic processes and procedures such as regular visiting and reviewing. These checks and balances are most important when partnership working is not strong and local authority performance is poor. As the DfE gets ready to test the reforms, it will need to take account of how weaker authorities make improvements. Fortunately, the successful journeys many local authorities have been on are powerful case studies about the ingredients for great practice to thrive.
Sufficiency
It’s important to get the balance right between local services that keep children close to home and economies of scale at a regional and national level. Sufficiency issues are a daily source of concern in local authorities around the country and here in Ofsted. Despite the ever-growing numbers of children’s homes, we still do not have the right homes offering the right care for children. It is not just about available places - it is about the right homes in the right place that are properly regulated. Ofsted lacks the regulatory powers to tackle the saturation of homes that exists in some places.
The regulatory system
We welcome the intended review of the regulatory system. We have long said that the Care Standards Act is out of date.
Too many children are seen as not meeting thresholds for specialist mental health provision. They then remain in inappropriate placements (including unregistered children’s homes) and are often deprived of their liberty. The government promised us additional powers to tackle unregistered children’s homes, but these are yet to materialise. Solutions for these children will require a cross-government response. For example, the rising numbers of children with high level mental health needs mean that health, social care and justice placements need to be planned jointly and to better meet children’s needs close to home.
Workforce
We support the planned reforms to strengthen the children’s social work workforce. But children’s social care services are not delivered only by social workers. It is right to make social work practitioners a key focus, but the wider social care and children’s workforce also needs to be included.
Government should actively and publicly value the critical roles of children’s social workers.
Ofsted’s role
We will continue to offer our best advice to government as the reforms develop. Our inspections of local authority children’s services (ILACS) will support the culture shift, iterating carefully and informed by engagement with the sector, as the reforms move forward.
We have been asked to look thematically at the work of regional adoption agencies in the autumn. We hope this can inform the thinking about regional care cooperatives.
Our social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) inspections will continue to focus on children’s progress and experiences. We’ll recognise starting points and the careful work of staff with children on a daily basis, managing risk and complexity sensitively and with care.
We will regulate and inspect proportionately and with great care in a time of change. Our inspections will continue to focus on the experiences of and progress for children. We expect the reforms, if resourced and implemented well, to improve both. We will keep children and families front and centre and continue to support those of you doing the hardest work and making the most difference for children and families.
]]>In the autumn, we will publish a research project on children with complex needs who live in children’s homes. This is a 2-stage project. The first stage, which we completed earlier this year, involved running a survey of all local authorities and children’s homes providers. We asked them what they associate with the term ‘complex needs’ and how often they have issues in finding homes for, or accepting referrals for, children with these needs. We were pleased that we had responses from 807 children’s homes and 78 local authorities.
About the project
This project follows on from our recent research report which explored the challenges that local authorities face when planning for sufficiency. We highlighted the increase in the number of children who need specialist provision to support their complex needs. And we highlighted the difficulty that local authorities experience in trying to find suitable homes for them.
Throughout the project, we want to develop a clearer understanding of:
What are ‘complex needs’?
'Complex needs' is often used as a catch-all term to refer to many different needs or risks.
We asked local authorities and children’s homes which types of needs contribute to a child’s needs being considered complex.
Respondents said that all types of need can contribute but a combination requiring support from multiple partner agencies is central to the definition.
We found that the most common responses about what ‘complex needs’ are fell into four main groupings:
Individually, these areas may not be considered complex, but their frequent combination with other groupings contribute to the definition of ‘complex needs’.
Finding homes for children with complex needs
Almost all (91%) of the local authority respondents said that they often or always experience difficulties finding homes for children with complex needs.
On average, local authorities said that it takes four months to find a stable home for children with these needs. Some reported it can take as long as three years.
Over three-quarters of local authority respondents said that children with complex needs often or always experience one or more of:
This confirms what we had already heard anecdotally from sector professionals.
Systemic barriers that impact children
The research also points to some sector-wide and systemic barriers to finding homes for children with complex needs, or providing care for them within children’s homes. These, include issues with:
Children’s homes reported that poor communication and lack of transparency from some local authorities about the child’s needs is a barrier to referral decisions. In turn, local authorities reported that some homes are not able to deliver the care outlined in their statement of purpose documents. These views highlight just how important thorough and reliable information-sharing between children’s homes and local authorities is.
Some children’s homes also still believe that caring for children with complex needs can result in lower inspection grades. This perception is understandable but it is incorrect. As we have said previously, how complex a child’s needs are will not affect how we grade a home. What we do on inspection is recognise where services are adapting and responding appropriately to children.
Next steps
The survey findings are informing the next stage of our research in this area. Over the summer, we will be speaking with children living in children’s homes and the professionals who are involved in their care. We also want to share examples of good practice with you.
We would like to thank the local authorities and children’s homes who participated in our survey and look forward to sharing the full report in the autumn.
]]>As we begin another Foster Care Fortnight, I want to again offer our rightful appreciation to the people providing incredible yet often unremarked-on foster care to tens of thousands of children every year.
Fostering a child is an incredibly generous and selfless thing to do even in the best of circumstances. But in the tough context we currently live in, it is a remarkable act.
The love, personal sacrifice and tenacity that so many foster carers exhibit every day, without expectation of recognition or reward, makes a huge difference. It makes a huge difference to the children they care for, and to the communities they live in.
#FosteringCommunities
This year’s theme for the fortnight of #FosteringCommunities is well chosen. It recognises how foster care can help children to stay in their communities, with all of the benefits that brings. It recognises that, in fostering a child, carers are enriching and aiding their community. And it recognises that everyone involved in foster care is part of that wider fostering community.
It's a community I’m proud to be a part of. When I was a director of children’s services (DCS), one thing I particularly loved were our annual foster carers celebrations, where we welcomed new arrivals, marked long service or celebrated wider successes. I was – and am – in constant awe of the people I met, and continue to meet through Ofsted. Creating the nurturing environment where children can thrive is not something that is easy to weigh or measure but whatever the essential ingredient is, foster carers have it in buckets.
Making the difference
At this time of year, I am always fondly reminded of the foster carers I’ve met and some of the children whose stories will stay with me forever.
I remember the foster carer who took up fishing to be able to spend time with his teenager – which was an important as it was the young lad’s connection and positive memories from time with his grandad.
I remember the fostering family who maintained regular contact with a teenage boy who was in their care briefly, but who needed many months of in-patient mental health care. The support of the foster carers and his ‘foster-siblings’ was fundamental to his own belief in his long road to recovery.
I remember two foster care families organising a joint trip to Butlins so that the siblings could holiday together.
I remember foster carers’ kindness to birth parents as they struggled through diminishing contact and respite carers supporting birth parents through their child’s end of life care.
I recall sitting with proud foster parents celebrating success events at school, or hearing about their celebrating exam results, getting a new belt in karate, making successful contact with a sibling, university admission, passing their driving test or getting a Saturday job. The important events in the child’s journey stay with us as well as the sad times we have to support them through.
Seeing the difference
These are just a few of the stories that stick with me. But my colleagues and I at Ofsted see so many more every time we visit local areas for our inspections. They are often contributions that cannot be captured in a league table or performance data but we do see them in abundance. We hear of it from children, social workers, Independent Reviewing Officers and from rightly proud DCSs and their teams.
When our inspectors come back with tales of delight, we take delight in those positive outcomes. We feel a sense of professional pride in being able to report good work – work founded on love and kindness and with enduring conspicuous care and ambition, for children who absolutely deserve the very best from us.
]]>Since 2016, our full inspections have shown that STCs do not provide the quality of care that we expect for children. In some cases, children were at risk of harm. This is simply not good enough for some of the most vulnerable children in our society.
That is why we are introducing more frequent inspections.
In a recent targeted consultation, stakeholders overwhelmingly agreed with our proposals because they share our concern about children who live in STCs and support more external scrutiny.
What assurance inspections are and what they will they look like
Assurance inspections will be shorter than full inspections. They will focus on:
They will be a part of the joint inspection framework for STCs but will not replace or replicate full inspections.
The inspection reports will state whether the quality of children’s experiences is improving or deteriorating. And they will say what action STCs must take to improve.
Assurance inspections will be unannounced. This is because children told us that this is what they want. In previous consultations children told us they want inspectors to see places as they are day-to-day.
The oversight of the experiences of children who live in secure provision is, rightly, high on our agenda. Introducing assurance inspections to STCs, as we have already done in secure children’s homes, is the right thing to do and will give us a better line of sight to children’s day-to-day lives.
We will re-publish the Inspecting secure training centres framework on 5 April 2023. This will include full details about the new assurance inspections for STCs.
]]>UPDATE - 01/02/24
This blog post was originally published in February 2023 but the information on how we use the survey results, and why it is important, remains relevant.
The 2024 survey runs from Monday 5 February 2024 and closes on Sunday 24 March 2024.
Earlier this month, we launched our 2023 Children’s social care point-in-time surveys. We run these questionnaires every year for about 6 weeks in February and March. This year, the surveys will close on 26 March 2023.
If you are asked to share or complete a survey, please do so if you can. The responses help us in deciding who and when to inspect. The information also helps us to decide what to focus on and ask about when we’re inspecting.
What are the surveys?
We use the online surveys to gather views about:
We try to get responses from everyone in or connected to children’s social care, including:
Deciding when to inspect
As mentioned above, the surveys help us in several ways.
First, your responses help us to decide when to inspect services. Inspectors may prioritise inspecting a service where answers were less positive or flagged certain issues. For example, if several responses about a service mention high staff turnover, we might bring its inspection forward. This is because high staff turnover can indicate a lack of stability for children.
If a service receives very few responses or blank surveys, we may well prioritise that service’s inspection. This would be because the low or no response rate could indicate a closed culture or a manager not sharing the survey with children, staff, parents and professionals.
Of course, if any responses raise serious concerns, we follow them up immediately.
Deciding what to focus on when inspecting
As well as helping us to decide when to inspect, the survey responses help us decide what to focus on when we do inspect.
Inspectors will review responses while they prepare an inspection. This can help them decide what their lines of enquiry will be, what they need more information about, and what concerns they want to look in to. The survey responses help them identify potential risks and problems or things that could develop into bigger issues if left unchecked.
It’s not just negatives. The responses can also help inspectors look for positives and good practice. They might see things they want to check on inspection that could contribute to a good or outstanding judgement or be shared as an example of how to do things for other providers to consider or adopt.
The bigger picture
As well as helping with individual inspections, the survey responses help us build a bigger and better picture of how children in care are supported across England. Last year, we received over 40,000 responses including nearly 6,000 from children. The responses helped us raise concerns about issues including children’s mental health in secure homes. But we were also able to highlight good news like the fact that most children said their relationships with the adults and children where they lived or stayed were positive.
We have published a full analysis of the findings from last year’s survey responses.
What you can do
If you are a provider registered with and/or inspected by Ofsted, you should have received an email containing a set of links that are unique to your service. The email will outline which audiences should receive each unique link, for example children, staff or parents. You should send out these links to the relevant audience types for that provider. We have published more guidance should you need it.
If you are a child or parent and have received the survey from your school, college, agency or centre, please do complete it if you can. Your response will help us and could make a real difference. If you haven’t received a survey, ask the provider.
You can also call Ofsted on 0300 123 1231 or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk. We won’t be able to record your comments in this way but can answer any questions you may have about the survey or how we will use your responses.
]]>2022 saw the publication of several reviews looking at the children’s social care sector. The Care Review, the Competition and Markets Authority market study, and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel all made major recommendations for reform.
In our own Annual Report, which we published at the end of the year, we set out the important backdrop for these calls for reform: the social care sector is under significant pressure due to a combination of workforce issues and wider systemic and social issues.
We also raised specific concerns around unregistered children’s homes, criminal exploitation, care leavers, supported accommodation and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
We did, though, identify some remarkable resilience from providers within the sector. Overall, we found the picture for local authorities’ children’s services has improved in very difficult conditions. And for social care providers, especially children’s homes, there has been little change in overall effectiveness. In many ways, this is notable given the pressures they face.
What next
However, the sustainability of this picture is under question. The pressures on the sector look likely to increase in 2023 as any further increases in the cost of living are likely to increase the number of families living in poverty. Local authorities may in turn see higher numbers of children in need and more child protection cases.
Our report on local authority sufficiency planning found that many are already struggling with a last minute dash to find homes for children coming into care due to the rising demand for places and a lack of suitable accommodation. Any increase in children entering care could overwhelm an already stretched system.
As well as this continuing focus on children entering care, in 2023 we will be increasing our scrutiny of children leaving care. From this month, our inspections of local authority children’s services (ILACS) will include a separate judgement on ‘the experiences and progress of care leavers.’ This follows our recent consultation on changes to the framework, which saw over 90% of respondents support our plans for a specific focus on care leavers.
In April we will begin registering currently unregulated accommodation providers for 16–17-year-olds in care and begin pilot inspections later in the year. Right touch regulation is one of our strategic priorities and we will make sure this applies to this new role. We will be proportionate and risk-based in our approach to get this right for all children in supported accommodation.
Our strategic priorities also include ‘keeping pace with sector changes’ and ‘inspections that raise standards.’ These will also be forefront to us in 2023 as we:
All of thus will be taken forward alongside any new asks arising from the DfE’s response to the Independent Review of Social Care, National Panel’s reports and the report of the competition and marketing authority. As an integral part of the children’s social care system, we stand ready to play our part.
]]>Yvette Stanley, our national director for regulation and social care, provides an update on our plans to regulate supported accommodation.
We’re fast approaching the time when we can accept applications to register as supported accommodation providers. This is a whole new area of work for Ofsted, providing important regulatory safeguards for children. Over the last year, we’ve been busy getting ready – recruiting inspectors, developing our registration guidance (due to be published soon), and planning ahead for beginning inspections in 2024.
In November, we hosted two webinars for potential providers (including many local authorities) to share our current thinking about Ofsted’s regulation and inspection arrangements for supported accommodation. More than 1,500 people joined the live events and the recording has had over 500 views so far. (You can view the recording here.)
These kind of events are not only a good way of sharing information with a wide audience, but the questions you ask at them also help us to sharpen our thinking and clarify our messages.
Since we held the webinars, the government has launched its consultation on the quality standards and guidance for supported accommodation for children in care and care leavers aged 16 and 17. I hope that everyone with an interest in the care system takes the time to respond to the government’s proposals.
The Department for Education (DFE) consultation will be open until Monday 16 January 2023.
We carried out a survey of local authorities earlier in 2022 to help us understand the size and nature of the supported accommodation sector. From the responses to that survey, we estimated that there were around 1,100 supported accommodation providers. We also estimated that there are as many as 7,000 looked after children and care leavers aged 16 to 17 living in this type of provision.
To have a better understanding of how diverse supported accommodation is, we sent a voluntary survey to providers of supported accommodation in October 2022. We received more than 400 submissions, which was encouraging. Although this did not give us a complete picture of the entire sector, the providers who did respond were accommodating around 70% of the estimated number of 16-17-year-olds living in supported accommodation. This coverage gives us strong evidence on the size and scope of this provision and will help us to manage the demand when we begin receiving applications in April.
There were around 4,200 settings split across the 400 providers who supplied us with information. Over 60% of providers were operating five or fewer settings, and just over a third of providers had only one or two settings. Only five providers were operating more than 100 settings.
We asked providers to tell us about the different types of provision they offered, with reference to the proposed categories of supported accommodation (as set out in the current DfE consultation).
The most common setting type was ‘single occupancy’ (over 40%). Most other settings (30%) were shared or group accommodation specifically for 16- to 17-year-olds and care leavers. The remaining settings were either supported lodgings-type provision in private homes or shared accommodation that could also accommodate non-care-experienced residents aged 18 years or older.
Around 40% of the residents were aged 16 to 17, 35% were care leavers aged 18 years or older, and the rest were non-care-leavers aged 18 years or older.
Each of Ofsted’s regions were represented in the survey responses. All had at least 300 settings and all had at least 50 different providers operating in them (except the South West region which had fewer). The split of accommodation types varied slightly between regions. For example, there was a higher proportion of group accommodation settings specifically for 16-17-year-old children in care and care leavers in London and the East of England. The North East, Yorkshire and the Humber region had a higher proportion of ‘single occupancy’ settings.
As you’d expect, we’ve been working closely with the DfE as it has been developing its proposals. It’s essential that the legal framework equips us to be a responsible and effective regulator. We are very aware of the challenges and pressures that commissioners are facing in finding places for children in care and care leavers to live. We also know that children need a nurturing and safe home environment as they approach adulthood.
We are committed to getting the regulatory balance right. To enable us to do so, the law must give us the powers to intervene effectively on behalf of children when children are not being cared for or supported properly. The standards and regulations must allow us to act flexibly and proportionally in this hugely varied and dynamic sector, while retaining high expectations of quality for all types of provision. Regulating and inspecting at the provider-level, for example, is one example of a proportionate system that provides a level of assurance across the provider’s total provision. We can also respond to concerns at a setting-level when that becomes necessary.
We agreed to regulate and inspect supported accommodation just over 12 months ago. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector observed then that children’s experiences of supported accommodated were too often unacceptably poor. Standards need to rise urgently. Regulation is an important step in the right direction. But it’s only a small step - and only part of the solution.
Government data recently confirmed that, in March 2022, the number of looked after children in semi-independent accommodation rose by more than a quarter in 2021-22. Over the same period, the number of children in unregulated placements increased by 23%. That number now equates to nearly 1 in 10 of looked after children.
I strongly believe that regulation will improve standards. But it may lead, at least in the short-term, to further difficulties. Our oversight is likely to shed light on the uncomfortable reality - that too many children are currently living without the right kind of everyday safeguards that they should expect from a system that is there to protect and care for them.
While it may be true that supported accommodation is right for some children, it’s hard to believe that it’s the right option for as many as 7,000 children in care. Few would argue that the lack of suitable care provision across England is not one of the main drivers for the growing reliance on unregulated, semi-independent provision.
It’s crucial that we continue to use our insights to share truths, however uncomfortable, to leaders and decision-makers in all parts of the system. We will use our powers responsibly and proportionately but, as you’d expect, our first priority will always be children. All of us who have a role in assuring this system (including providers, local authorities, the DfE and Ofsted) will need to oversee these changes with great care. We must share our insights on the impact, and respond appropriately and swiftly to the challenges that emerge along the way.
At Ofsted, we endeavour to be a force for improvement in the next phase of this journey. We will highlight and celebrate good and outstanding practice but, where we see shortfalls, we will report without fear or favour, and take the necessary action. We will also share our insights on any systemic challenges to assist policy and decision-makers in continuing to improve the experiences of all children in care and care leavers.
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