Adoption service inspections not tough enough, Ofsted concedes
Inspections of adoption services have been too lenient in the past, the deputy chief inspector of Ofsted has admitted
Addressing delegates at the inspectorate’s first annual social care lecture, John Goldup said that adoption service inspections have not always focused on the right judgments.
“People are quite reasonably saying, how can it be true that 80 per cent of local authority adoption services are good or outstanding – which is what Ofsted inspection judgments say – when the number of children adopted from care is falling, when there is huge variation between authorities in the time it takes to place children for adoption and when the government is identifying a national crisis in our adoption system,” he said.
“I think these are very complex issues, and there are no simple or simplistic answers. But I do say, as far as inspection is concerned, I’m not sure we have been looking at the right things, at the things that make the most difference.”
He insisted that the quality of adoption service inspections has nothing to do with the ability of Ofsted inspectors, but argued that the old national minimum standards on adoption were unfit for purpose.
He added that it was wrong to try to evaluate adoption services within “the inappropriate straitjacket” of the Every Child Matters outcomes.
“Actually the outcome that matters most for these children is the decision that they need a new family being made early enough and purposefully enough, and asking whether they are getting that life-changing opportunity as quickly as possible,” he said.
Responding to Goldup’s lecture as part of a panel debate, Matt Dunkley, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said he had “a longer list of where Ofsted has got it wrong in the past”, aside from adoption services inspections.
“I do think the current safeguarding and looked-after children inspection model is still based on a deficit model,” he explained.
“The current social care inspection model is good at identifying failure. We’ve seen that 18 authorities out of 93 have been rated inadequate so far in this inspections cycle, but is it really true that only two out of 93 are outstanding?
“I don’t think the current inspection model is good at identifying different grades of success above the level of satisfactory or adequate. If it’s going to be part of a dialogue about improvement, it needs to move away from a deficit model.”
He went on: “A climate of fear is not good for the sector.
