Children left at risk for 'too long' due to Shropshire Council failings, Ofsted inspectors find
Children are being left at "risk of harm for too long" due to "serious and widespread systemic failings" in a council's child protection services, inspectors have found.
Ofsted has given Shropshire Council 20 days to come up with a draft plan to address its concerns, which were uncovered in a focused inspection in November last year.
The watchdog says there has been a deterioration in the council's services since they were rated 'good' in 2022.
A report published by Ofsted today specifically highlights concerns over the "quality of social work practice for those children subject to child protection plans".
It said council management were aware of the issues but their plans to improve the situation have not yet been effective.
The report states: "There are serious and widespread systemic failings, leading to weaknesses in child protection practice, which leave children at risk of inadequate protection and significant harm.
"These concerns were known to senior leaders at the time of this visit, but the plans for improvement outlined in the self-evaluation have not yet had the necessary impact on the quality of practice to ensure that children’s needs are sufficiently addressed."
The report from inspectors Rebekah Tucker and Rebecca Quested highlights a number of areas of concern.
They said: "Too many social workers and managers fail to ensure that child protection processes are followed to investigate and manage escalating risks to children.
"There is a lack of systematic management oversight of frontline practice. This means that children are exposed to the risk of harm for extended periods without proactive action being taken when risks increase.
"For example, the local authority is not always holding strategy discussions in a timely way, there are delays initiating child protection enquiries and decisions to start pre-proceedings are taken too late.
"This has contributed to children experiencing significant drift and delay."
It adds: "There have been considerable challenges in the recruitment and retention of staff since the inspection, which has led to an over-reliance on agency workers in the case management teams.
"This has resulted in very frequent changes of social worker for some children and families.
"The situation is compounded by the significant turnover of team managers and one service manager in the last 12 months, which has created a level of inexperience across the case management and court teams.
"This has led to inconsistent and ineffective management oversight of plans to support children.
"Capacity within the quality performance and assurance service is insufficient to meet demand, due to the increased numbers of those children who are in care and subject to child protection plans.
"Caseloads for child protection conference chairs are too high.
"As a result, child protection plans do not receive the appropriate level of independent scrutiny and challenge when there is a lack of progress for children.
"There are also vacancies in key quality assurance posts, which has impacted on the ability of managers to gain assurance about the quality of social work practice in this area of the service."
Ofsted has given the council 20 days to provide a draft action plan to address the concerns – and 70 days for the completion of the full version.
Shropshire Council has been contacted for comment.
