Action Planning Visit

1. Action Planning Visit Gloucestershire Council Ofsted attendees: Emmy Tomsett, HMI (lead inspector) Shirley Bailey, Senior HMI Nicola Bennett HMI 5 Sept 2017

2. The inspection findings re-visited Key Themes Leadership and management Partnership working Basic Practice standards

3. Leadership & Management • Lack of integrity and openness in the senior leadership team. • Identified weaknesses v pace of change • Staff feel vulnerable, fearful of challenging or exposing poor practice. • Staff reportedly feeling vulnerable, whistleblowing, deteriorating relationships between staff and managers. • Lack of accurate performance management information. • Underdeveloped quality assurance processes. • Limited audit activity. • Poor management oversight and weak supervision. • Lack of experience and stability in the work-force.

4. Partnership working • Thresholds for services are inconsistently understood and applied • Lack of input by partners in key decision making for children • Specific issues in relation to the Police – delays in strategy meetings

5. Basic practice standards • Children are not seen regularly enough • Culture of over- optimism, lack of professional curiosity • Significant delays in assessing risk to children • Poor and delayed decision making for children • Poor quality assessments and plans for children • Delays in strategy meetings/child protection investigations • Poor case recording • Limited impact of IROs and child protection chairs • Delays in decisions to look after children

6. Strengths • Financial and political commitment to learning • Good involvement of young people in strategic planning – the Ambassadors Team. • Improving commissioning arrangements • Strengthening of early help services • Improving focus on child sexual exploitation • Adoption service

7. Challenges & Risks • The ‘inadequate’ effect • Creating an environment where good social work can flourish needs corporate ‘buy in’ • Trying to do too much at once • Making sure areas not found inadequate are given sufficient priority • External pressures

8. The story so far ….. Consider the verbal evidence base presented by inspectors alongside your improvement plans • do they cover everything? • Are they sufficiently robust?

9. The improvement plan

10. Challenging the improvement plan: • Is the plan sufficiently SMART? • Was consideration given to an accompanying risk register or RAG rating? • Have the ‘achieved’ been achieved? • What are the priorities? • Is there sufficient attention to quality vis-a-vis quantity? • Is the plan outcome focused?

11. Your improvement plan: Some questions…… • Are the ‘building blocks’ evident? • What difference will it make to C&YP? • How does the plan ensure you embed and sustain the necessary front line cultural changes and improvements? • How are children and young people participating in the improvement process? • Are you consistently putting the child at the centre of practice and management? • What evidence of impact will you use to demonstrate that change has occurred and is being sustained?

12. Further opportunities? • Have all opportunities been seized for the engagement of: • Practitioners • Children, young people and their families • Partners • Other strategic bodies • Are you making the most of audit as a driver for improvement? • Are all other inspection findings not subject to a recommendation being addressed?

13. Next steps Monitoring visits & re-inspection

14. Quarterly visits related to key weaknesses and recommendations • Activity to include tracking and sampling children’s experiences • Lead HMI will write a brief report evaluating the local authority’s progress • The report related to the first monitoring visit will not be published • Re-inspection usually within two years of action plan being submitted • Possible shorter fieldwork and evidence from monitoring taken into account /www.gov.uk/government/publications/monitoring-local-authority-childrens-services-judged-inadequate-guidance-for-inspectors

15. Thank you.