Children's Service's in Northamptonshire inadequate OFSTED grading

The Council’s inadequate grading of it’s children’s services by OFSTED is deeply disappointing primarily for those that use the service but also for those that work so very hard in extremely challenging working conditions in the service. Northamptonshire County Council runs one of the most expensive children’s services departments in the country and is currently heading to a £6.3 million overspend in that single department. With some sections running at extremely high levels of agency workers, (particularly the section that it responsible for initial responses to those citizens needing childrens services called the First Response Teams). These teams are running between 60 -88% agency staff, some with no permanent social workers. This together with a failure to achieve savings by recruiting social workers from overseas or to get agency workers to convert to full time social workers results in not only inadequate but very costly services. The Council is being told that the route for a stable and well skilled workforce is by acquiring something nebulously termed a “Career Pathway”. This is entirely uncosted and doesn’t seem to address the fact that the council does not pay as much or offer similar or better terms and conditions. It seems strange that the Career pathway is not juxtaposed as a strategy to returning to national pay, terms and conditions for staff as an alternative approach. This would not be something that difficult to cost, so why not?

After last months cabinet, Councillor heard from discussions with council staff and council commissioners that there were four new senior management posts being created in Childrens Services. This was not in the budget passed in the spring and it is unclear whether this is in the £6.3 million overspend. The OFSTED report is being presented to cabinet with one of the briefest papers I have ever seen also including a hazy statement under consultation and scrutiny:

“ This report will be reviewed through this structure as appropriately determined. “

There is no clarity as to the plan to improvement and no statement of the four new senior management positions on £100,000 a year and their role to taking the council to a better Children’s Service department.

Although in a previous Overview and Scrutiny meeting, the existing Director of Children’s Services has stated unequivocally that she accepts the findings of the OFSTED report, there is still a sense that this statement is not owned by the department as a whole. Three days before the OFSTED report was published at a time when senior officers would have had some idea of the impending OFSTED decision, I attended a Corporate Parenting Board meeting. At the meeting there were a number of slick presentations and some very gritty input from care leavers living in new supported accommodation in Northampton assisting them to move on to independence. However, one of the most shocking things in the report is the practise of the department in placing some of those in local authority care in “unregulated placements that are unsafe and unsuitable”. Some of my constituents have asked whether this practice has increased in the move to “Next Generation Council” ways of working. I have asked questions on this but have been unable to get an answer to date. It is also still unclear why this particular fact has not in the past few months been brought to the Corporate Parenting Board, particularly in the light of a dedicated Children’s Scrutiny Committee being abolished last year. Portfolio holder, Fiona Baker admitted that the Corporate Parenting Board should have coonsidered  this but were not provided with the opportunity to do so.

This time two years ago, the highly critical LGA peer review of Northamptoshire County Council was published. Although it was distributed to Councillors there was no content in the covering paper expressing an analysis of the report or a strategy of dealing with the findings. This was highlighted in  the spring 2018 Government Inspectors report by Max Caller report. After the report was published there was much baring of the administration’s soul about lessons being learnt. Yet here we ware again with a independent highly critical report, not given the consideration it deserves and not giving Councillors the detail to effectively contribute to the governance literally is a matter or life and death to some of our most vulnerable children.

It seems that Councillors (or maybe it is just opposition councillors) are being kept at arms length. Sad when there is so much more we could contribute.

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