Middlesbrough children's services 'still need improvement'

Children's service staff had been "working hard, just not in the right places", the council said

Middlesbrough's children's services are still not meeting an adequate standard in some areas, inspectors say.

A children's commissioner was appointed two years ago to oversee social work after Ofsted rated it "inadequate".

This has now been withdrawn after improvements, but some concerns remain and government inspectors said the department now had to comply with an "improvement advisor".

The council said the service was "moving in the right direction".

In the latest direction issued to the council, the Department for Education said while the Secretary of State had "noted the improvements made by the council since the first direction... the council is still failing to perform to an adequate standard, some or all of the functions to which section 497A of the Education Act 1996 is applied by section 50 of the Children Act 2004.

Sue Butcher, director of children's services, said she had always known it was going to take two or three years after the "very poor" report in 2020.

'Quite comfortable'

"You have to nurture staff at the beginning because they are quite bruised with what they had seen, because everyone was working hard, just not quite in the right places as it were.

"You've got to focus on the areas that make a difference, then you have to build up compliance, build up your systems and performance around audits."

She added she was "quite comfortable" with where they were two years in.

"We have ticked all the boxes when it comes to compliance and are focussing on further improvements in quality", she said.

"There is a further monitoring visit in June and after that time Ofsted will be discussing with us when we have our full inspection.

"So hopefully this time next year we will have a good report to celebrate, I'm confident about that."