The pace of change and improvement remains too slow at Tameside, Ofsted has warned.
In the third monitoring visit since the local authority was judged inadequate in December 2016, inspectors saw that priorities had been translated into a 12-week plan.
“This has not led to strong coordination of service improvement or consistent frontline practice. As a result, despite the hard work of staff and managers, the pace of change and improvement remains too slow,” said the monitoring report.
However, the service offered to children and families at the Public Service Hub continues to be better than at the time of the inspection. An extra manager has ensured that oversight remains effective, even though there is more work coming into the Hub. Contact records seen at this visit show good consideration of history, appropriate information-gathering and sound analysis to inform decision-making for children.
Work with children who go missing has improved since the inspection. Staff at the Public Service Hub now manage notifications about all missing children. They have effective working relationships with partner agencies, which ensure better information-sharing.
The information that is recorded from returning home interviews is helping the police find children more quickly if they go missing again.
However inspectors highlighted that the service provided to care leavers, which was judged to require improvement at the time of the inspection, has not made enough progress.
The size of the leaving-care team has increased and caseloads are lower, the report adds. Inspectors saw evidence of staff spending more time with young people and giving them good-quality support.
No young people have been placed in bed and breakfast accommodation for six months. However, the local authority does not have access to a good range of accommodation for care leavers, which means that provision is unlikely to meet future demands.
“Since the last monitoring visit, there has been a reduction in staff turnover. This is providing greater staff stability and capacity to make further improvements to services. However, despite staff and managers understanding what needs to improve, the absence of a clear plan that supports improvement in practice continues to impede progress,” the report concludes.
A look back at 2022 with WillisPalmer's Head of Practice, Lucy Hopkins…
2022 saw people trying to get back to some degree of normality following the Covid-19 lockdowns, restrictions and school closures that we had faced for the previous two years. However, the impact of Covid-19 continued and many services experienced, and continue to experience, backlogs and difficulties, including those services relating to children and families.
Social worker [...]Every year people are excited to see what the theme of the John Lewis & Partners Christmas advert will be. This year's advert reminded our Head of Practice, Lucy Hopkins, of all the times she arrived at the homes of foster carers with children or young people who were anxious, scared, worried and hungry, having just [...]
The WillisPalmer Christmas Tree Decorating Competition 2022
We have two Christmas trees at the WillisPalmer office and this year the staff upstairs are going to compete with the staff downstairs to see who has the best decorated tree... and we want YOU to decide on the winner!
Tree 1 - Downstairs
Tree [...]
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