High workloads are impacting on social workers at Staffordshire children’s services, Ofsted has warned.
A restructure of the children’s social care service is planned and senior managers believe that the changes will have a positive impact on workforce capacity, caseloads and the quality of practice, resulting in improved outcomes for children and young people.
These changes have been delayed for reasons outside of the control of children’s social care.
“However, the recent rise in workloads, caused by an increased turnover of social workers, has resulted in a small number of children not receiving a good enough level of service, particularly where new risks emerge for children whose cases are already open to children’s social care,” said the Ofsted report.
“Excessively high caseloads in some social work teams across the service are having an adverse impact on social workers’ ability to see children in accordance with their plans. Social workers try to see the children they work with regularly so that they can understand their lived experiences. However, many social workers are struggling to see children enough in order to make direct work meaningful and to achieve change,” the report added.
Senior leaders recognise that improvements to the service must be made as quickly as possible to address the high workloads of social workers, to ensure first line management oversight, and to re-establish the stability that has, until now, been a positive feature of this local authority.
In the focused visit, inspectors evaluated the local authority’s arrangements for the protection of vulnerable adolescents.
They highlighted:
In order to improve practice, Staffordshire children’s service needs to address the audit process as it does not robustly capture or ensure that senior managers have a clear line of sight on the quality of social work practice and its impact on children. High caseloads also need addressing.
While management decisions are regularly recorded, supervision records lack sufficient evaluation and smart actions. Supervision is not used effectively to find solutions to barriers. Finally, children’s plans are not smart enough and actions do not have sufficient purpose or prioritisation in terms of timescales.
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Sixty Second Interview with Chloe Bach
Find out more about our Business Administrator Chloe Bach who has been with WillisPalmer since 2009.
Tea or coffee?
Coffee (oat milk latte)
What 3 things would you put in Room 101?
Migraines, slugs and war
What is your favourite place in the world?
Wherever my family is (but I do love New York)
If you were on death row what [...]
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