To consider a report outlining Central Bedfordshire Council’s Children’s Services Post Ofsted Inspection Action Plan.

The Panel considered the report outlining Central Bedfordshire Council’s Children’s Services Post Ofsted Inspection Plan.

Points and comments included:

1.    The Action Plan had been delivered by the 5 December 2017 and was currently in month 1 of implementation.  Monthly monitoring of the plan would be undertaken by the Director of Children’s Services and the Directorate Team for the first 3 months and quarterly thereafter.

2.    After three months the decision would be made whether to continue to monitor the plan on a monthly basis or to reduce this to quarterly.

3.    The Plan focussed on three key areas; training and learning; process changes and additional oversight and challenge

4.    Feedback given from the Ofsted inspection included that Elected Members and the Corporate Parenting Panel should be more challenging and a critical friend and that the Children In Care Council Representative should be more robust and challenging at CPP meetings.

5.    A specific programme would be put in place to look at the issue of Permanency.

6.    After the summer, colleagues from other local authorities would be invited to take part in a Peer Review.

7.    Were the headings on the Plan robust enough?  Should the Plan include the person responsible for the area of work, milestones of what needed to be achieved, an indicator of whether work was on track, success criteria to set out what the outcome looked like for the local authority and for children and families receiving the service and any financial constraints?

8.    Did the Action Plan need to include information about the lack of perceived challenge from the Panel and demonstrate areas of challenge such as action and accountability by the Panel, benchmarking in the form of looking at work being undertaken by Corporate Parenting Panels and visits to local authorities rated as outstanding for children’s services Ofsted inspections?

9.    Was a mechanism needed to ensure that there was no slippage to the timeframes set in the Action Plan?

NOTED

the report outlining Central Bedfordshire Council’s Children’s Services Post Ofsted Inspection Plan.

RESOLVED

1.    that the framework for the Peer review and the findings be reported at a future meeting of the Panel.

2.    that benchmarking be undertaken by looking at the work being undertaken by Corporate Parenting Panels in other local authorities.