Government lifts intervention notice on Herefordshire Council's child protection services

Confirmed this afternoon (Thurs), the lifting of the notice recognises improvements made to child protection practice in the county since the “inadequate”  finding by Ofsted in 2012.

Last year, Ofsted returned to record substantial progress being made.

The government took Ofsted’s report into account and Department for Education (DfE) officials carried out their own review in December.

Jo Davidson, director of children’s wellbeing at the council said: “Getting to this point has been a real team effort. It has taken a lot of soul searching, honesty, fierce debate and very hard work. We still have a long way to go in our mission to get to good and we are pleased that our progress so far has been recognised."

Cllr Jeremy Millar, cabinet member young people and children's wellbeing, said:  “We would not have achieved the lifting of the notice without the inspiration of our Children in Care Council, the conscientious work of our staff, the willingness of all of our partners to see safeguarding as their responsibility too and the prioritisation of children’s wellbeing by everyone involved.”

The service was optimistic of the notice being lifted.

As early as May last year, an Ofsted follow-up inspection moved the service on to “requires improvement”.

After the DfE inspection, officials were “broadly reassured”  as to the progress the council was  making against the action plan addressing safeguarding issues identified in 2012.

 As a result, the recommendation to withdraw the notice was made to the relevant minister.

 Related reports cited a “new found confidence” within the service given “added impetus” to the progress being made.

The council wants to see the service graded “good” by 2016/17 but, from the frontline up, it is accepted that there is still some way to go.

Improvements are said to be not yet fully embedded and the staffing situation remains relatively fragile, though its reliance on agency appointments is easing.

As reported by the Hereford Times, permanent staff appointments are a priority with the council ready to pay “London rates” to recruit child safeguarding specialists.

The offer, signed off at cabinet level, is aimed at ending the long-running reliance child safeguarding has on interim appointments.

Against heavy competition regionally and nationally for such specialists,  the council proposal pitches a base salary of up to £40,000 for a social worker and up to £50,000 for a team manager – comparable to salaries paid in London and the south-east.

This would be coupled with a £5,000 “golden hello” payment and up to £5,000 cover for re-location costs to make what is pitched as the most competitive safeguarding recruitment offer in the West Midlands.

Another £27,500 will be spent on related recruitment advertising, emphasising the progress made by the service since the “inadequate” Ofsted verdict of 2012 and the work-life balance the county can provide.

The approach  will be implemented through the council’s existing recruitment services contract with Hoople seen as able to offer a higher, more competitive basic salary, offset by a defined contribution pension scheme with an employer’s contribution rate of six per cent rather than the 24.6 per cent of the local government equivalent.

On the council’s figures,  the campaign makes a cash saving of £4,000 over 2015-16 and £50,000 in subsequent years.

The service is also engaged in  a “grow your own” scheme to attract and develop newly qualified social workers.

Eight recruited in 2013 are now ready to fill permanent roles that would have gone to an interim with another eight set to make the same difference next year.

Figures now available show 421 contacts were made with child safeguarding over December last year, a decrease of over 43 per cent from the peak of 747 in July and down 24 per cent on November.

Over the month, 10 children were put on to child protection plans, with another 29  on a protection plan for a second or subsequent time with primary factors being domestic abuse, drug misuse, and mental health issues within families.

There continues to be a month-on-month decrease in the number of children put onto protection plans.

But this drop in the number of children on plans is not reflected in figures  for timely child protection visits.

Over recent years, the number of children on specific protection plans in the county at any one time has hovered around 200.

Individual safeguarding caseloads are now said to be manageable and averaging at 16, but there is variance between – and within – teams.

As a result of improvement initiatives, the service has had a number of legacy cases to assess.

Neglect, specifically chronic neglect, makes up much of ongoing caseload work.