Ofsted finds care leaver services have improved

Inspectors said relationships between care leavers and their personal advisors had also improved

Ofsted says significant improvements have been made in how a council supports its care leavers.

An inspection in July found Cambridgeshire County Council's support for care leavers had strengthened since it was rated as requiring improvement in 2024.

Inspectors spoke to care leavers, personal advisors, staff, and managers, and concluded that while progress has been made, further work was still needed.

A spokesperson for the authority said it was seeing progress following the last full inspection and was continuing to improve support.

The Ofsted report looked at the council's arrangements for care leavers.

Inspectors said leaders were "ambitious" in supporting care leavers access employment, further education and training opportunities, describing its use of bursaries for those over 19 as "trailblazing".

They also found stronger relationships between care leavers and their personal advisors, with additional staffing helping to reduce staff turnover and workloads.

Despite the progress, Ofsted said four key areas needed further development.

This included the quality of supervision from managers, consistency of pathway planning, the availability of suitable accommodation and quality and impact of managers for "purposeful and considered case direction".

In response, the council put a comprehensive action plan in place, including a focus on high quality support for managers and collaboration with housing providers to ensure young people can access appropriate accommodation when needed.

Edna Murphy, chair of the Children and Young People Committee at Cambridgeshire County Council, said she was pleased Ofsted had recognising the "hard work and investment put into this vital area".

"As a Council, we take our role as Corporate Parents for the county's looked-after children and care leavers extremely seriously," she added.

"In recent years, we have made a number of commitments to supporting our care leavers, including granting them 'protected characteristic' status.

"There is still more we can - and must - do to improve our support for care leavers, and we're already seeing progress in a number of areas following our full inspection by Ofsted last year."

Ms Murphy continued that recruiting more personal advisors had helped reduce workloads and enabled advisors to work with care leavers from a younger age to create more stability.

She added the council was also committed to staying in touch with care leavers beyond 21 years old, adding one care leaver interviewed by Ofsted described the support they received as "life-changing".