BCP Council's children's services improving, watchdog finds

Ofsted found there was still "inconsistent decision-making" in assessing child neglect cases

Services for vulnerable children in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole are making "steady progress", the child services watchdog has found.

Ofsted rated children's services at BCP Council inadequate earlier this year.

A monitoring visit last month found things were "slowly improving" although there were still issues in assessing neglect and domestic abuse cases.

The council said the report had acknowledged its "sensible and sustainable plan".

The Ofsted inspection in December 2021 found "serious and widespread weaknesses" which were leaving children unprotected.

'Encouraging'

"The quality of social work that families experienced was inconsistent, due to a high turnover of staff and failings in very basic social work practice," it said.

A follow-up inspection was carried out in early October.

"Pockets of better and more consistent social work with increasingly regular management oversight and growing staff confidence are leading to some positive results for children."

It found the turnover of staff was still "higher than senior leaders would wish" and there were still delays in protecting vulnerable children.

"The absence of a clear, unified approach of 'this is how we do it here' for staff leads to inconsistent decision-making in child protection conferences, poor planning and a lack of depth in assessing and analysing the underlying reasons for chronic neglect and the impact of domestic abuse on children," it said.

It also said harmonising systems and working practices following the reorganisation of local government in 2019, when BCP Council was formed from the merger of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole borough councils, was proving a "barrier" to progress.

Cathi Hadley, director of BCP Council's children's services said the report was "encouraging".

"We have already made progress and the quality of our social work is improving.

"We fully understand what needs to be done and are honest about the challenges we face," she said.