Children's services goes from inadequate to good

Cathi Hadley, director of children's services, thanked staff for their work (second from left)

A council has "transformed" its children's services, with a rating of "good" in its latest Ofsted inspection.

BCP Council was labelled as "inadequate" by the watchdog in 2021 and a year ago was still allowing vulnerable children to be "at risk of harm".

But last month inspectors found an "unrecognisable" service, with many improvements.

Cathi Hadley, executive director of children's services, said the report reflected the hard work of the team.

She blamed several factors for previous poor ratings, including the 2019 merger of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole borough councils.

"We then had Covid which had an impact on everyone working across the council...," she said.

"There wasn't a stable leadership team, there'd been a history of directors coming and going."

The councillor responsible for children's services praised the team's work

Ofsted's latest report said senior leaders had made "significant progress" in "improving their services to better help, protect and care for their most vulnerable children".

It also stated the pace of dealing with problems from the damning 2021 inspection had "much improved and strong progress has been made in most of those areas identified".

But they did warn "children at risk of exploitation and older care leavers do not consistently achieve positive outcomes" - something managers were trying to address.

Ms Hadley added better "checks and balances" had also been put in place.

"We had a significant number of agency staff.. about 30% of staff were permanent and 70% of staff were agency. We've changed that significantly...," she commented.

"Nationally there's a shortage of social workers, and obviously when you have a rating of inadequate, that can be quite scary, working in that environment.

"We've had a workplace strategy to help and support us in that, we've looked at the rates of pay that we currently do, we really turned around the culture we had within the leadership team.

"This is an awesome result and every single member of staff... have all contributed to this. And they should be massively proud..."

Councillor Richard Burton, member for children, said: "BCP is now a much better place for children and young people to live. Our children's services team have done very well.

"...our role is to make sure that children are safe, that vulnerable children are safe and that we do things to ensure that happens.

"If we get it right... then you actually get it right across the whole of society, because children grow up, and they have better systems in BCP."