Coventry’s children’s services ‘inadequate’, say inspectors
Services at a council that was criticised over the death of four-year-old Daniel Pelka have been branded “inadequate” by inspectors.
An Ofsted inspection published today found that too many children and young people in need of help and protection in Coventry are not seen swiftly enough, placing them “at risk of harm”. The report, which followed an inspection that ran from 28 January to 5 February this year, also states that leaders and managers have not tackled key weaknesses in children’s social care quickly enough to ensure that children and young people are effectively helped and protected. And it points to the fact that social workers in the referral and assessment teams have very high caseloads, which means they “cannot do their job properly”.
“The lack of robust management oversight of social workers’ caseloads means that managers do not know whether all children have been seen or assessed,” the report said. “Social workers do not always receive the right level of supervision from their managers to enable them to discuss cases fully and make the right decisions for children and young people, to improve their outcomes and ensure their safety and welfare.” In the key inspection rating area of children looked after and achieving permanence the authority was rated as “requires improvement”.
In the other two key areas of children who need help and protection, and leadership, management, and governance, the authority was rated as “inadequate”. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) was also rated “inadequate”. The inspection findings mirror those of an independent review into the death of Daniel Pelka, who died from a head injury in March 2012, and had been starved and beaten by his mother and her partner, who were convicted of his murder in August 2013.
That review, ordered by children’s minister Edward Timpson after he criticised the original serious case review for failing to answer key questions about what went wrong in the case, found that stress brought on by high volumes of work resulted in frontline practitioners making poor professional decisions. Coventry is one of six authorities to have a report into the quality of its children’s services published today by Ofsted. Of the others, East Sussex, Staffordshire, and Essex all received overall ratings of “good”, while both Bolton and Hounslow received “requires improvement” ratings.
Source: CYPNow
